


Things I Couldn't Live Without

by n_a_feathers



Series: Things [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Flashpoint - Freeform, M/M, but more world's end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-19 23:23:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11908365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n_a_feathers/pseuds/n_a_feathers
Summary: When it all becomes too much to bear, Barry runs back into the past and saves his mother, hoping that it will fix all the darkness in his life.Can he find Len again in this new world?A continuation (and the conclusion) of Things I Can't and Won't Feel Sorry For.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [[授权翻译]我不可或缺之物/Things I Couldn't Live Without](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12015672) by [kiy900](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiy900/pseuds/kiy900)



 

 

The future he returned to was almost the same but different in subtle ways.

 

The first place he ran to when he got back from the night of his mother’s murder was his childhood home. The forest green weatherboards, brick columns and cream gables inspired a sense of hope in him the likes of which he hadn’t felt in a long time.

 

The stairs had seemed so much taller the last time he’d climbed them. 2000. He’d been eleven at the time. He hadn’t been back to the house since, barring flashing in and out trying to save his mother.

 

He stood outside the door for the longest time, worrying. Just because Thawne hadn’t killed his mother that night all those years ago, didn’t mean she hadn’t died in the sixteen years since. The same could be said for his father. He’d worried about the big things – murder and imprisonment – and completely forgotten that outside his superhero world there still existed cancer, heart attacks, and random accidents. Christ, even just divorce. His own memories were still stuck in the last timeline; it would be a while before the new memories started seeping in.

 

He could wait until they did, until he knew for sure before knocking. Or he could stake out the house, wait until someone came or went. But that all took too much time. He needed to know now. His parents were the keystone to this new timeline: if they were safe, then it was already built on a solid foundation. Whatever happened after that, he could deal with it.

 

One last breath for courage and he raised his hand and knocked.

 

He strained his ears and for a second he thought maybe the house was empty. But then came the muted shuffle of footsteps on the wood floors.

 

Sixteen years and he could still recognise her walk.

 

The door opened on a face he never got to know.

 

There were flecks of grey in her hair, running through it like strands of silver. Not enough to make her look old, no, but a reminder to Barry that, in this timeline at least, she had been allowed to grow old instead of being struck down in her early forties.

 

“Hey, mum.”

 

Her face broke into a smile that made him want to cry. “Well, isn’t this a nice surprise.”

 

“Hey, slugger,” his dad said, coming up behind her and wrapping an arm around her waist. In direct contrast to Nora, he looked younger and more carefree than when Barry had last seen him. Not being wrongfully imprisoned for 15 years would probably do that to a person.

 

His mum waved him in. “We were just about to have lunch. Come in and join us.”

 

Barry followed them inside. He paused at the entrance to the sitting room as they went on ahead. Less than an hour ago – but sixteen years earlier – he’d stopped the Reverse Flash from murdering his mother right there. The rug on which he’d cradled her body the last time he’d watched her die was still there. He thinks they would have had to burn it in the other timeline. The amount of blood that had soaked into it… they never would have got it out.

 

He turned away and wandered down the hall. The same photos still hung on the walls, the hardwood floor still creaked in the same spot. He looked up the stairs as he passed them; his childhood room was up there.

 

“We were just having sandwiches,” Nora said as he walked into the kitchen. “Is that enough for you?”

 

“That’ll be fine, thanks,” he answered, taking a seat at the kitchen table. His father sat across from him, the weekend paper spread out in front of him as he drank a coffee. Barry had forgotten he did that, but the memory suddenly came rushing back. Every Saturday morning, he would sit down in the kitchen and read the newspaper from cover to cover as his mother went about the house doing her own thing. When Barry would wake up and come downstairs, Henry would hand him the comic pages.

 

Nora brought each of them a plate and they settled down quietly to lunch. Barry was almost bursting with all the questions he wanted to ask, but at the same time he knew every one of them would sound weird to his parents. He only had to wait and the new memories would settle in eventually but he didn’t know if he can bear the delay. He wanted to know now.

 

“How’s work, honey?”

 

“Same old, same old,” Barry answered, hoping that was actually the case. He had no idea what he did for work in this timeline. “Anything new going on with you two?”

 

“Your dad’s –” she shot a cheeky look towards Henry “— been thinking about retiring soon.”

 

“Nora…” Henry protested, rolling his eyes like this was a common discussion between the two of them.

 

“You should,” Barry was quick to agree. “You and mum should take some time, go travelling and enjoy yourselves.”

 

“Even if it means spending all your inheritance?” Henry joked.

 

Barry laughed but his insides clenched, thinking of the meeting he’d had booked in with the solicitor next Wednesday in the old timeline to sort out his father’s estate.

 

Suddenly he couldn’t stand the thought of being away from his parents, of leaving them alone and defenceless against all the evil in the world.

 

“Hey,” Barry said tentatively, “I was wondering, would you mind if I moved back in for a little while? They’re doing some works outside my building and the noise is doing my head in.” He actually had no idea where his apartment was in this timeline. It could be the one he’d had before he was struck by lightning, or it could have been anywhere else in Central City. He’d have to wait for the memory to come.

 

“Of course,” Nora had answered quickly, real pleasure in her voice. “We’d love to have you back.”

 

Barry couldn’t help himself: he got up from his chair and went and hugged his parents. “I love you,” he said to both of them.

 

 

***

 

New memories started coming in later that afternoon. Enough that he was able to figure out where he lived now and go pack a bag for staying at his parents. He was happy to see that his new neighbourhood was far enough away that they probably wouldn’t ever find out about his lie.

 

He got other facts about his life too, like that he wasn’t a CSI anymore. Obviously his mother’s death and the mystery surrounding it had been the main impetus to push him in that direction because in this timeline he was a simple chemist at Kord Industries whose main job was synthesising polymers. On one hand, it felt like he’d lost a defining part of him, but on the other, it also eliminated many of the obstacles that had made being with Len so problematic in the other timeline.

 

Not being an employee of the police department anymore, he wouldn’t be punished if his relationship with Len came to light. Not that they had a relationship yet; as far as he could tell from the memories he did have, they’d never even crossed paths in this timeline. But once they did (once Barry had wooed him, he laughed) then they could go out in public together, be normal.

 

In general, his life seemed boringly normal: no extreme highs or lows. And he could live with that.

 

After dinner he ascended the stairs, running his hand along the bannister with reverence. His room wasn’t as he’d left it, divested of the signs of his childhood and of his personality. Just neutral enough that his parents could use it as a guest bedroom at a push. Barry supposed most of his things had been moved to his apartment, he just hadn’t poked around enough while he was there to notice.

 

He changed into pyjamas and padded across the hall to the bathroom. A tile in the corner was still cracked from when he tried to top up his gold fish’s bowl without help. He’d cried himself silly in the corner as the fish flopped around helplessly amidst all the broken glass until his mother had rushed up the stairs and hurriedly scooped it up into the toothbrush cup and saved it from dying. The fish died of natural causes over a decade ago but the broken tile remained. The design was so old that his parents were never able to find a replacement and they ended up sanding it smooth and leaving it as it was.

 

Back in bed, he curled up under the blankets and felt good about things for the first time in forever.

 

His parents were alive and happy and no one was dead because of him. The people he loved and cared about weren’t being targeted simply because they were a part of his life. He had a job that he seemed to like, even if it wasn’t that exciting. Maybe he could do without exciting for a while though. Nothing good ever seemed to come of exciting.

 

And somewhere out there was Len. He’d find him eventually. If they could fall for each other in one timeline, they could do it again in another. Barry began to fantasise what their first meeting would be like.

 

Of course, in his mind, he knew that their meeting wouldn’t be a spontaneous thing. Most likely it would be his own doing because as soon as he found out where Len was, he’d figure out a way for them to meet. It would all go on smoothly from there without the darkness that had marred the start of their previous relationship.

 

That knowledge didn’t stop Barry from dreaming up a meet cute for them.

 

Maybe they’d meet at the museum. Barry liked the idea of there being a kind of parallel to the circumstances of their original meeting. He should find out where the Kahndaq Dynasty _diamond currently was tomorrow._

 

Maybe he’d be at the bank one day, and Len, Lisa and Mick would come barrelling in, faces masked and guns drawn. Logically, he knew that wasn’t really their style but the idea of meeting – re-meeting – Len that way tickled Barry’s fancy. Maybe their eyes would meet as Len watched over the hostages while Lisa and Mick emptied the vaults. Would there be a moment of recognition for Len? Would he see Barry and know him on some molecular level, unhindered by the change to the timeline? Maybe. And maybe that would make them take him with them as a hostage. Or maybe Len would seek him out later.

 

Or maybe they’d meet in a bar, catch sight of each other across the room. Len would buy him a drink and they’d sit huddled together and talk until last call. They’d linger at the door, not ready to part yet and Len would tentatively mentioned he didn’t live that far away. They’d walk there, standing closer than people who’d only known each other a few hours probably should.

 

As soon as they were through the door to Len’s apartment, they’d be on each other. Len’s hands sneaking up under his shirt, Len’s lips against his throat, Len’s leg between his thighs. Barry let his hand slip under the blankets and into his pants as he continued the fantasy. He didn’t think they’d make it as far as the bedroom their first time. Maybe they’d get to the couch, but he could also picture himself spread out on the floor, Len suspended over him, his mouth hot and insistent against Barry’s as they ground together.

 

Barry turned his face into the pillow to muffle his moans as he palmed himself over his underwear. The cloth barrier made it easier to imagine it was Len who was touching him.

 

He pictured them going further than they’d ever actually gone: Len’s mouth on him or his fingers in him. Len inside him – something he hadn’t realised how badly he wanted until the possibility was lost to him.

 

Len would be gentle at first, Barry was sure of that. He was always so maddening gentle. Barry slipped his hand under his underwear and around his erection as he pictured Len above him, naked. He’d only seen him that way a couple of times but he’d made sure to burn the scars, the softness of the skin on his hips and belly, everything that made Len _Len_ into his memory.

 

Barry stroked himself to completion as he imagined Len rocking into him, head bowed, mouth slack, eyes clenched tight like it was all too much at once.

 

Soon, he’d be able to have that again.

 

He would find Len.

 

 

***

 

The next morning Barry stood in front of the bathroom mirror, the minty taste of toothpaste in his mouth as he considered his next move.

 

Luckily it was a Sunday so he didn’t have to jump straight into a job he didn’t fully remember yet. On one hand, he’d really like to spend the whole day with his parents. He’d missed them so much and the thought of leaving them unprotected for any amount of time still sent wild spikes of anxiety through him. On the other, he wanted to know if all of his friends were happy in this world too.

 

There was one acquaintance of his that he could find out at home.

 

It took him several minutes of looking off-centre, just behind his own mirror image, before he worked past the embarrassment of talking out loud – seemingly to himself if no one answered. Of course, in this case, he was hoping that someone would answer.

 

He started by rapping on the mirror with his knuckles, feeling stupid the whole time.

 

“Hey, McCulloch, are you there?” It was the Mirror Master equivalent of ringing a doorbell when you weren’t sure if someone was home and waiting on the front step to see if the door would open, only more embarrassing.

 

Because, Barry realised, even if this timeline’s McCulloch heard him, why would he answer? He didn’t know Barry from a bar of soap. He wasn’t some urban legend that could be conjured by saying his name into a mirror three times.

 

Shamefaced, Barry turned away and went about his day.

 

 

***

 

He spent two weeks in this new world with his parents.

 

After about a week, all the new memories had settled in amongst his ones from the old timeline. Sometimes he’d be in the middle of a conversation with his father and have to take a moment to remember if something he was about to say would make sense to this version of his father or if it would just confuse him.

 

He went to work on the Monday. The work was mostly easy and he still had his own working space like he had had at the CCPD. It didn’t seem like he had work friends, but then again, the only “friend” he’d originally had as a CSI was Joe, his father. He’d never found it easy to make friends and it seemed like a new timeline hadn’t changed that. It wasn’t something that bothered him. It was just how it was.

 

He spent his free time researching.

 

On the first day he found out was the Rogues weren’t the Rogues here. Barry couldn’t find any mention of Leonard Snart or any other of the Rogues on the internet now except for Hartley – and he was only mentioned in relation to his parents. So they might not have even been criminals in this timeline. Maybe Lewis had stayed on the straight and narrow. Maybe he’d been good to his kids.

 

Or maybe Len was just better at not getting caught in this timeline. That was a definite possibility, especially with no Flash around. He wished he still had access to CCPD’s database to see if there were any mentions of him, any cases that listed him as a suspect but that had stalled without any of the evidence needed to convict.

 

Just in case, Barry made sure to look through the members of Central City’s local government too. Maybe his Len had been an aberration and – like the Earth 2 Len – every other Len was a fine, upstanding citizen who was also the mayor or a local judge or even just a councillor.

 

No such luck, though. He didn’t find anything there either.

 

It didn’t diminish Barry’s hope though. Everything was so much better in this timeline; all the sadness and darkness was gone. It was only a matter of time before he found Len. Barry ran the streets of Central every day, trying to catch a glimpse of that widow’s peak or sarcastic smile.

 

The next day he dug a little deeper into the world he’d known.

 

With Eobard Thawne safely locked away, Barry could only assume that the timeline was back to how it should have been. There was no Arrow. Harrison Wells was the real Harrison Wells and the particle accelerator was still several years away from being operational. There wasn’t a Flash – even though Barry had still somehow retained his powers from the other timeline. He asked around as subtly as he could, trying to not come off as a complete nutjob, and eventually found out that there were heroes on this Earth and that most of them operated out of a ship in space. Or maybe not quite space because when Barry googled it, there weren’t any photos. Somewhere beyond space. Somewhere telescopes couldn’t see.

 

They were god-like, people said. They could fly, teleport, and meddle with the very workings of the universe. They called them post-humans instead of meta-humans. Barry might have been alarmed at that except that from everything he read, they always seemed to be fighting for good. Doing a better job of it than Barry had ever done by the sounds of it, too.

 

These heroes didn’t seem to deal with petty, street-level crime much though, so he still found himself putting on the suit his Cisco had made him and patrolling the streets. He couldn’t help himself. It had become too much of who he was by then. It was easy to slip out of the house after his parents went to bed and continue doing what he’d been doing for the last two years.

 

There was a big difference between his timeline and this one that he sorely missed when it came to patrolling: no Cisco or Caitlin in his ear as he ran. No Iris or Joe either, really. His memories told him that he and Iris had drifted apart in primary school in the absence of his mother’s death and Joe taking him in. So she was just someone he used to know who occasionally served him coffee at Jitters. When he went there especially to see her again, they had made small talk about the weather but nothing more. When he asked his parents about Joe, he was informed they still caught up every now and again but he barely knew Barry.

 

Losing his friends and his second family hurt. He wouldn’t deny that.

 

But they were better off without him in their lives. Barry had checked. Ronnie was still alive and married to Caitlin. Eddie was alive and Barry guessed it was only a matter of time before he met and fell in love with Iris – if he hadn’t already. Cisco… Cisco would never have to know what it felt like for the man who had mentored him for years - the man he’d looked up to as a father figure – to thrust a vibrating hand through his heart and watch dispassionately as he died.

 

Their lives were infinitely better for not having all the evil and drama that being friends with the Flash had brought into them. Barry could deal with a little bit of loneliness for that.

 

It wasn’t like he was unhappy either. This was how he’d spent most of his life, up until he’d been struck by lightning. He was never one of those people who was friends with everyone. Through school he’d had one or two really good friends and that was all he’d needed. He wasn’t a social butterfly by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Having his parents was enough. And soon he’d find Len and then his life would be complete.

 

 

***

 

 

His first weekend in the new timeline he caught a bus into the city and walked out to STAR Labs. It was nothing like the building he’d used as Flash headquarters. If he strained his memory, he could only just remember what the old building had looked like before they’d built the particle accelerator around it. It was strange that something so integral to Central City’s skyline was missing. It would be like New York without the Empire State Building or Seattle without the Space Needle.

 

Next he traced the path he, Len and Hartley had taken one drunken night and walked over Van Buren’s Bridge into the Keys. He could have run and done the journey in mere minutes but he was coming to appreciate slowness in his everyday life.

 

He walked to the familiar brick building on the corner of Campbell and 24th. The curtains to the corner apartment that he knew was Len’s were drawn but that could mean anything.

 

He could go up there right now. Knock on the door and see who opened it. It could be Len. It could be anyone else too. He didn’t know if that’s how he wanted their first meeting to go though. What excuse would he give for having knocked if it was Len? It made it all too complicated.

 

Barry had all the time in the world. As much as he wanted to see Len again, he didn’t need to force it.

 

He looked around him quickly to make sure no one was watching and then he flashed away.

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

The next day the Carrier fell burning from the sky and it all went to hell.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

The Carrier was a massive ship: 80 kilometres long, 55 kilometres high and 3 kilometres wide. Shaped like some futuristic gun, it was usually anchored in the intersection between universes known as the bleed and accessed via “doors” able to be opened at any point in space. It possessed some kind of sentience but no obvious methods of communicating. Whole country’s worth of people could be housed in its vast interior and – at various times in the past in this timeline – had been. It took refugees when no other country or organisation would or could.

 

It was also the home base of this timeline’s strongest team of heroes. From the Carrier they could access any place on earth almost instantaneously using these doors. It had been powered by the potential energy of a caged universe until this was ripped from its body by an unknown attacker.

 

But of course, Barry found out all of this later.

 

The day it fell from the sky, he knew nothing.

 

It began like any other Thursday. He woke up in his bed at his parents’ house. As usual, it took him a moment to sort the old memories from the new in his post-sleep haze and he was overcome momentarily by a feeling of unreality. That was followed quickly by a sense of foreboding that something bad would happen soon and take all of this away from him. He lay there, looking up at the ceiling, and breathed deeply.

 

He focussed on the sound of the water rushing in the pipes below, the soft murmur of his parents’ conversation coming up the stairs and, outside, the noises of early morning traffic.

 

He closed his eyes, took one last calming breath and assured himself that everything was as it should be.

 

He got up, got dressed and went downstairs to eat breakfast with his parents before his dad had to run off to the clinic. His mum kissed him on the temple as he left and repeated the action when it came to Barry’s turn to go.

 

He arrived at work at ten minutes to 8 like he always did, and headed into his lab. There was already a pile of job requests lined up and more would come as the day wore on, so he got straight into it. It wasn’t easy work and it was fairly different from what he’d been doing as a CSI at the police department. Nevertheless, it was something he’d had a lot of practice with in this timeline and so he turned his hands on autopilot as his mind continued planning out ways to find Len. Most of his waking thoughts were dedicated to that aim.

 

At 12.30 he decided to take lunch. He got up from his seat and groaned at the stiffness of his limbs. His back in particular ached. He found that for some reason he often got all tensed up leaning over lab equipment most of the day, even though, since getting his powers, it had never troubled him before.

 

He took the stairs down to the ground floor because the lifts were usually busy around noon as people started leaving for lunch. It gave him time to think about what he’d have to eat. He’d been doing the rounds of all the eateries in the area, trying each one once and then moving on. Not because he hadn’t found any he liked, but because it let him cover more ground on a daily basis. Len could be anywhere.

 

He hit the lobby and paused. Something was different. The usual lunchtime hustle and bustle was absent. There was no one around. The receptionist was missing too. If not for the bright sunlight streaming through the front bank of windows, Barry would almost think he’d fallen asleep and come down in the middle of the night. It was never this quiet. He walked hesitantly through the lobby and out into the street.

 

That’s when he knew for sure that something was wrong.

 

There were other people about but not one of them was moving. They stood, rooted to the spot, their eyes fixed above them.

 

Barry looked up.

 

A giant mass, trailing black smoke, hung ominously in the sky.

 

Barry had been a space nut once. When he’d been in school, he was always nagging Joe to send him to any camp that pandered to whatever his particular obsession was at the time. There had been reptile camp, robotics camp, chess camp… but in year 9 it was space camp he’d begged to be allowed to go to. He’d loved being out of the city where he could really see the full magnificence of the night sky, undulled by the light pollution from Central.

 

With the camp’s superior equipment he’d been able to look at the moon, at the planets in our solar system and, further away, stars from others. Objects that still seemed tiny even magnified through a telescope were bigger than anything he would ever see. In space, the distance between stars was so huge, his head began to hurt just contemplating it. But looking up there from Earth, the distance between them could be measured in finger-widths.

 

As Barry looked up at the midday sky, the opposite was true. A sort of terror gripped him, made his heart jackrabbit, as he tried to fight the reality of how close this hurtling mass was. This wasn’t right. Comets and asteroids were supposed to be streaks of light in the sky, barely visible. He watched silently with everyone else on the street as the dark mass sluggishly arced through the sky, heading north-east, a communal sense of doom and helplessness gripping them all.

 

Barry had unzipped whirlwinds, quieted tsunamis and harnessed lightning but he couldn’t think of a single thing he could do to stop this. The problem was too immense. Like the dimensions of the universe, it was barely fathomable to his mind.

 

The strange thought came to him. This is what had killed the dinosaurs. This was what a literal earth-changing event looked like. This is what it felt like when whatever force controlled the universe decided to wipe the board clean. This was a close to an act of god as you could get.

 

Barry stood there, maybe for minutes, maybe for hours. Time seemed to crawl at a snail’s pace, to dilate. No one moved at all until the mass disappeared into the horizon. When it blinked out of sight like the sun sinking at the end of the day, it was like a switch immediately flipped inside everyone.

 

There was no lack of hysteria. In fact, it was probably the most widespread and rational reaction. Barry stood in the middle of it all, completely numb.

 

Point him at Reverse Flash or Gorilla Grodd or the Rogues and he knew what to do. He might be scared witless, overpowered and outmatched, but he’d fight tooth and nail until the end. He always trusted that with his friends help he could overcome it all.

 

But what could he do against something like this? He couldn’t fight it. He couldn’t push it back. Unlike the time that Savage had destroyed the twin cities and everyone he loved in them, he couldn’t go back in time and fix this.

 

He had no options but he knew one thing: he wasn’t going back to work today.

 

Not really thinking, Barry started walking in the general direction of his home. As panicked people buffeted against him, as he fought through them like a ship ploughing through a storm, he felt the beginnings of fear begin to gnaw away at his state of shock.

 

A fast walk turned into a jog turned into a sprint and then he was tapping into the speed force, the need to be home, to be with family, suddenly so overwhelming it was all he could think about and he was running, faster and faster, the scenery turning to a blur around him as all he could focus on was moving forward. He had to get back to his mum and dad. He had to protect them from whatever was happening.

 

The streets of Central City flashed by as he ran, people everywhere, gridlock, until less than a minute later he was standing on the front porch of his home.

 

Nora’s car was in the driveway but Henry’s wasn’t. Barry wanted so badly to race to his father’s clinic and spirit him back home. He needed to make sure he was okay. But first: his mother.

 

He burst through the front door, expecting the worst. Instead, he found his mother sitting in front of the TV, edged so far forward on the couch that she was barely even seated on it anymore. She looked up as he entered, hands held anxiously over her mouth, holding back the hysteria.

 

Her eyes were pleading, beseeching for someone to make sense of the senseless things happening on the screen in front of her, when she asked, “Barry, what’s going on?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Slowly, like moving underwater, he went to her and took a seat on the edge of the couch too. He watched a zoomed in image of the mass in the sky. It wasn’t an asteroid like he’d originally thought: up close it became obvious it was a ship. It looked like something out of the sci-fi movies he’d always liked. More H R Giger than George Lucas though. He could see the massive damage it had taken, flames crawling across it like maggots, black smoke spewing behind it.

 

It fell and fell and fell.

 

They were trying to evacuate New York but there wasn’t enough time.

 

As Barry watched, he remembered another day like this. Sixth grade. Someone coming into the classroom. His teacher trying not to cry. No one wanted to tell them what was happening. He’d had to stay at school for most of the day as other parents came and got their kids. Eventually Joe had been able to get away from the station to pick up him and Iris. It was silent in the car as they drove home. The same footage on the TV, repeating for weeks.

 

The ship was mere kilometres from hitting the city, its shadow stretching monstrously long over the skyscrapers. Barry didn’t want to watch but he couldn’t look away.

 

The TV cut out.

 

The world outside the windows darkened.

 

Barry and Nora shared a look, a similar expression of fear on both their faces. As one, they turned from the screen and ran out into the street.

 

There were explosions, hundreds of them, high up in the atmosphere, spewing out darkness, blackening the sky.

 

The neighbours across the street were on their lawn too, looking up. Barry met the eyes of the husband and wondered if the wide-eyed terror in the man’s face was reflected in his own.

 

The smoke above ate away at the remaining sunlight until the sky was covered from east to west in unnatural night.

 

He turned to his mother, took her arm and waited until she snatched her eyes from the sky to look at him before speaking, making sure she was listening. “I’m going to get dad. Go back inside and stay safe. I’ll only be a minute.”

 

She reached for his hand. Her grip was so tight it hurt. “Barry, what do you mean?”

 

“I’ll explain when I get back.” He squeezed her hand in return. It felt like a stupidly insignificant gesture of comfort in light of what was happening around them. “Just, please, go inside.”

 

She nodded, let go, began to walk back across the lawn, up the steps, onto the porch. He couldn’t wait any longer. Not caring who saw him, he tapped into the speed force, drew the lightning to himself and ran.

 

It was harder to do in the dark. Being the middle of the day, the streetlamps that usually helped light his way were off. Most cars sat silent in the streets but occasionally he’d see a throwback to another era, using the footpaths because the roads were littered with dead vehicles.

 

He’d find out later that EM storms caused by the nuclear smog knocked out anything that used electricity to function. Within an hour the whole world was set back almost two centuries. No lights, no phones, no internet. And no cars with electronics working them.

 

It didn’t take Barry long to reach his father’s clinic. It was only a couple of suburbs across. Henry looked up in surprise when Barry’s lightning trail momentarily lit up the office as he skidded to a stop. He’d been seated, alone in the room, head in his hands.

 

“Barry?” He asked in confusion as Barry patted down the spots on his clothes that had started to smoulder. When he was sure he wasn’t going to go up like a birthday candle, he hurried to his dad, pulled him out of his chair.

 

“We have to go.”

 

“What’s going on? How did you…” He petered off, lost for words. Perhaps overwhelmed by all the impossible things that seemed to be happening today.

 

“Just hold on. I’m taking us home.”

 

Barry picked up his dad and ran. He didn’t stop until they were standing on their house’s front porch.

 

His dad was dazed, a little shaky on his feet, but he followed Barry when he went inside.

 

Barry walked into the dark living room and flipped the light switch without thinking. Nothing happened of course. He didn’t know why he did it – it made no difference – but he flipped it back.

 

Light came from the direction of the kitchen and his mother followed after it. Nora startled when the light fell on Barry and Henry but after her momentary fright continued on with her task single-mindedly. She’d found the candle stash under the sink and went about placing them around the room until there was a cheerful glow. Any other night and it would have been nice, the candles providing a cosy ambiance that electric lights lacked. It wasn’t night though. It was the middle of the day and it was pitch black outside.

 

Henry eyed Barry warily, keeping a little distance between them. “Barry, is there something you haven’t told us?”

 

Better to rip the band-aid off quickly. “I’m a meta.”

 

“A meta? You mean a post-human?”

 

“Yeah.” Barry started pacing the room, practically vibrating with nervous energy, sparks coming off his fingertips. He could tell it scared his parents but he couldn’t stop himself. “I’m a speedster. I run fast.”

 

“How?” Nora asked in disbelief. “You’re not a seedling, we had you tested.”

 

The words _I’m not your Barry_ almost sprung from his lips but he caught them. Instead he settled on: “It’s a long story.”

 

His parents accepted his powers reveal as minor compared to the rest of the things that had been happening that day. They worried more for his future safety when he admitted he intended going out there again to see what he could do to help.

 

It was hard to leave his parents though. So many horrible things had happened to his family in the original timeline. He never wanted them to go through that again. Leaving them alone, unprotected, went against every instinct he had, but he could only imagine what kind of mess the world outside their house was in. He couldn’t sit back and let other families go through the pain and loss he’d been through if there was something he could do about it.

 

Once he’d calmed himself enough to not feel so panicked about leaving his parents, he hugged them, suited up and headed towards the city. There were people stranded in the subways; he went for them first. Accidents, panicked fights, people needing to get to hospital. Not that the hospitals could do a great deal now. They were working by torches and candlelight with whatever equipment they had available to them. Barry raced between hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, trying to get the injured whatever they needed.

 

After that, he volunteered his services to anyone who needed them.

 

It soon became apparent that any communication more technologically advanced than paper letters and carrier pigeons was out of commission, wiped out by the EM storms that raged high up in the atmosphere, so a lot of the time Barry was asked just to get information from one place to another. He ran cross-country, getting messages and aid from one capital to another, always dropping in on his parents between each mission.

 

Nora would always insist he eat while he was with them. They worked their way through the perishables in the fridge and freezer first, cooking over a wood fire in the backyard. Once the fresh food was gone, they started on the canned goods. Barry supposed he’d need to learn to hunt when those ran out.

 

At first, Barry thought he could make a difference.

 

He ran all day and all night. It was hard to tell the difference now. He ran until he collapsed, unable to go any further. He’d sleep, eat and, once his body let him, he’d run again.

 

Although at first he’d avoided it, eventually curiosity got the better of him and he travelled to New York. He needed to see with his own eyes what had happened. The Carrier hadn’t crashed into the city so much as merged with it on a molecular level: metal, earth and living organisms melted together like so much candle wax. They would never be separated again.

 

The Carrier was almost inconceivable in its size, height dwarfing what skyscrapers still remained upright where they poked out of its low-lying parts. It blocked the Hudson and smothered Central Park. Maybe if Barry could find an entrance into its bulk, he would be able to find MoMA and Times Square inside it. The fear of finding a city of corpses scared him off the idea though.

 

Finding dead bodies had become an everyday occurrence. New York was only the start of it. The worldwide electrical blackout had caused the second mass wave of casualties. In the days and weeks that followed, those who had survived started to get sick. Vomiting, diarrhoea and fever were rampant. At first people chalked it up to bad water, spoilt food or stress. When it persisted, when people began to lose hair, when they started to haemorrhage and lose weight, when they eventually died en masse, those rationalisations fell short. It was quickly determined that the detonations up in the atmosphere had been radioactive. About that time, Barry started finding the suicides.

 

Casualties stateside were unimaginable. Barry didn’t even want to think what was happening outside of North America. He could only do so much or he’d be overwhelmed. He sifted through the wreckages of cities, searching for life but mostly finding death. Even after it became apparent that the dark smog that blanketed the skies wasn’t going to clear up, that life as they’d known it was never going to be restored, Barry kept running and helping.

 

And all the while, he kept an eye out for piercing eyes, a sarcastic smirk and that distinctive widow’s peak.

 

 

 

***

 

 

Barry paced the room, a direct contrast to Eobard Thawne’s stillness.

 

“You know how to fix this.”

 

“Shut up! Just… shut up.” Barry stilled. “Did you know this would happen?”

 

“This, exactly?” Eobard made a show of thinking it over. “No. This is even more apocalyptic than anything I could have imagined. But yes, I did know it would end badly. You’re like a child playing with a loaded gun with no conception of the damage you could do.”

 

Barry levelled a glare at his enemy. “If you’re so smart then tell me how to fix it.”

 

“You can’t fix it,” he answered flippantly. “The foundation is rotten to its core.”

 

Barry rushed the bars of the cage, snarling. “You’re wrong. The Earth’s safety doesn’t hinge on my mother’s death.”

 

Eobard was unfazed by the anger in his voice. He just continued to lounge against the cage, smirking. “One day, soon, Barry, you’ll be begging me to kill her again.”

 

Eobard’s laughter echoed behind him as he ran away.

 

 

***

 

 

By the time Barry realised his powers were going, he was already too slow to time travel.

 

He was running between Seattle and Central one day when he suddenly realised something was wrong. It was like pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor and having the car barely get up to 80km. Whatever power he’d once had was inaccessible to him now. His connection to the speed force had waned. It had happened so slowly, he hadn’t even noticed that he’d begun to slow down.

 

He was still fast though, for now, and the world was so wrong. So he did everything he could while he was still able to. He made sure that the scientists he’d been relaying information between were as up-to-date with each other’s work as possible. If there was any hope of fixing this world, they were it. He moved Eobard within walking distance to his parents’ house. It wasn’t hard to do; there were a lot of empty buildings now to choose from and the survivors minded their own business. He made sure his parents’ makeshift clinic was stocked up. Henry and Nora had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into caring for anyone they could. Barry now knew where he’d inherited that trait. Barry had helped them procure a whole lot of camp beds and now their house was like a small hospital. About half the patients were palliative.

 

Barry’s condition got worse daily as he became more and more human. He’d forgotten what it was like to feel normal. Everything hurt more. His legs ached from what little running he was still able to do, and he was tired down to the bone all the time.

 

Eventually, as he felt his last connection with the speed force begin to strain, he was forced to make the decision about where he was going to be stranded from now on. With most transport infrastructure rendered completely useless, interstate travel had become an effort of days, even weeks, rather than hours.

 

Of course he chose Central City. His parents were there, and everyone he knew from the old timeline. He hadn’t been able to locate Len in the peaceful fortnight he’d had in this timeline, but Barry suspected he wouldn’t have strayed too far from his hometown either.

 

Once he was too slow to really accomplish anything, he threw himself into working alongside his parents, helping however he could in that way. It all seemed so futile though. The sun still hadn’t reappeared from behind the smog. He hadn’t seen a bird in weeks. The plants started looking sickly and the people certainly weren’t much better. Those who came to the makeshift clinic had drawn faces and a lot of despair in their eyes.

 

Barry couldn’t see how this could be fixed. The world seemed irreparably scarred. Even if he was able to make the hard decision to go back to the past, to let his mother die and put everything back the way it had been, he was too slow to accomplish it.

 

More than anything, he just wanted to go home.

 

But this was his home now.

 

 

***

 

 

One day, Barry found himself walking in the direction of Star Labs.

 

That morning he’d been helping his parents around their hospice. The only reason he knew it was morning was the old grandfather clock in the hallway, its clockwork grinding away as it always had. It was unending night outside and they could have woken and gone to sleep at any time, but keeping to the old routines brought a sense of normalcy to their days.

 

Nevertheless, the work had taken a toll on his parents. They looked haggard and Barry supposed he probably did too. Two had died in the night. Barry and Henry had wrapped them in old blankets and taken them down to the backyard. Henry laboured for breath once they’d laid them out on the grass so Barry took up the shovel and got to work. It wasn’t a deep grave, nor did they get their own resting place, but it was more than most people got these days. Once Barry had filled the grave full of dirt again, he and Henry stood over it and said the Lord’s Prayer. Barry wished they could do more.

 

Nora was pressing a damp towel to a young girl’s forehead when Barry went to find her. The girl might still live. She was young and had been healthy when all this started.

 

Or she might die. He knew his mother would take it hard if she did. Children were always the worst.

 

Nora looked up from girl and saw him standing in the doorway watching. She smiled at him and he tried to smile back.

 

When he’d thought of his mother, he’d always associated her with a sense of _warmth_. Perhaps it was her auburn hair, her glowing complexion or the love in her eyes. Everything about her was comforting. He hated to admit it – even to himself – but she’d lost some of that glow. She was pallid and the skin under her eyes was puffy and dark, her hair limp.

 

There was still a little bit of it left in her smile though. Like a hint of spring at the end of winter. So he basked in it a moment, taking strength from the warmth it offered.

 

Then a trickle of blood came from her nose.

 

A brief flash of horror crossed his mother’s face before she turned away quickly and plucked a tissue out of her sleeve, quickly wiping the evidence of her sickness away. The tissue was speckled with blood already. She didn’t say anything so Barry didn’t say anything either.

 

He left the room, the house, the suburb. He walked until he saw something familiar and that was where he headed.

 

Once more he was struck by the difference the particle accelerator made to the look of the waterfront. The lab in this timeline was still just a vaguely corporate looking building. It seemed ominous in the eternal night that blanketed the world now.

 

Barry circled the building until he found an entrance that wasn’t locked. Looking around to see if anyone was watching him, he snuck inside and then turned on his torch. There wasn’t any sign of life in the labs as he walked. It was completely silent. He quickly realised that the first floor layout was almost identical to its post-particle accelerator version. They must have built the particle accelerator around the core of the building instead of bulldozing and starting from scratch. Or it was just a weird coincidence across timelines. Barry followed familiar corridors until he arrived in the cortex.

 

Like everything in this world it was the same but different. The banks of monitors and computers were unchanged but the Flash-specific items were gone. He swung the torch beam towards the corner where the mannequin they stored his suit on usually stood, but the space was empty.

 

Barry didn’t know why he’d come here. There weren’t any answers here. Star Labs hadn’t been involved with what had happened to the Carrier. He was just looking for something familiar, something from the other timeline.

 

He wasn’t going to find it here though.

 

With a resigned sigh, Barry turned to leave. His torch beam skimmed across the floor, lighting his way as he walked almost-familiar corridors. He paused where Eobard’s secret vault had been in the other timeline and ran his hand along the wall. It didn’t light up and it didn’t open.

 

He leant his forehead against the wall. Barry hadn’t realised until that moment that he’d expected to find the answers he needed here. This was the place where things always got fixed. He’d stupidly hoped he could find a way to save his mother here.

 

He balled his hand up into a fist and smashed it against the wall. He wanted to keep going, to pound the concrete until it was red with his blood, but he knew he’d be even more useless than he already was with a broken hand. He wasn’t healing anymore – not like he used to. Instead Barry let the cold concrete against his forehead cool him down and ground him. He breathed in and out. In and out. Sometimes that small expression of control over his own self was enough to make everything else seem almost bearable.

 

“You’re not supposed to be in here.”

 

Barry startled, getting his back against the wall for safety.

 

Stupid. He was so stupid. He was powerless, weaponless and he'd gone out alone into a post-apocalyptic world. He hadn't said goodbye to his parents, hadn't even told them he was going out. They'd wait for him, never knowing where he'd ended up.

 

Barry swung his torch beam wildly down the hallway until it illuminated a dark figure half-emerged from a doorway.

 

A man. Short. Long hair.

 

Barry pushed himself off the wall and rushed a few steps closer, torch aimed high enough to make out his face but not blind him.

 

A face he knew looked back at him.

 

“Cisco!”

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

For a second, Barry was sure Cisco had come to fix everything.

 

How he’d gotten from the original timeline to this one, Barry didn’t stop to think. It didn’t matter anyway. He was here now and soon things would be better. Cisco always had an answer. He was that familiar voice in Barry’s ear, a bit of humour when everything seemed bleak, telling him where he needed to go and what he needed to do.

 

Hope welled inside him until Cisco’s first words came back to him.

 

_You’re not supposed to be in here._

 

Like a quick breath blowing out a candle, his optimism was extinguished. This wasn’t his Cisco. It was this timeline’s.

 

Cisco moved further into the corridor, letting the light from the torch illuminate him fully. He wasn’t dressed in the pop culture print t-shirts Barry was used to seeing him in, or the Vibe costume for that matter. He was wearing a super suit though: enforced in all the right places and with a matching set of goggles that were currently hiding his eyes from view. His hair was longer and slightly scraggly.

 

His eyebrows pinched as he studied Barry. “Do I know you?”

 

Barry started approaching him, calmed by just being around his friend again even if this version of Cisco had never met him. He ached for any kind of familiarity with the old timeline. “No,” He said sadly. “Not anymore. I’m Barry.”

 

Barry held out his hand and, after a few seconds of staring at it like it might bite him, Cisco stripped off his glove, shoved it under his armpit and warily shook.

 

As soon as their skin touched, Cisco froze with a gasp and his hand tightened almost painfully around Barry’s.

 

Barry tried to break contact but gave up when it became apparent he couldn’t free his hand without using force. Cisco had him in a death grip. Instead he tried another option: calling Cisco’s name.

 

He got no response from that either though. Cisco made no sign that he’d even heard Barry, just continued to stand there motionless. If Barry had to guess, he’d say he was probably staring off into nothingness beneath his goggles.

 

It was a good minute later of Barry standing there awkwardly, shuffling his feet, before Cisco’s grip loosened and Barry was able to pull back his hand, shaking it a little to get out the cramping Cisco’s hold had created. Meanwhile, Cisco pulled the goggles from his eyes onto his forehead and rapidly blinked away the afterimage of whatever he’d seen in his stupor.

 

“Are you okay?” Barry asked tentatively.

 

Cisco looked at him, his vision clear and certainty on his face. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

 

“Yeah, I know. You said that already.”

 

“No. I mean, you don’t _belong_ here,” Cisco emphasised. “On this world.”

 

“What?”

 

“I saw… something. A different world. _Your_ world.”

 

Barry grew excited. If he still had his powers, he’d probably be close to vibrating out of his skin right then. “You can still vibe?” If Cisco could still vibe, he might be able to open a portal. Maybe not to the original timeline, but maybe to another earth where Barry’s powers would come back to him. Honestly though, even if his powers didn’t come back, it would still be a better option than this. Any step closer to his timeline and away from this nightmare would do.

 

“I don’t know what that means but yeah, sounds about right. I’m a seedling,” he said, as if that explained everything. On this world it probably did. But as far as Barry was concerned, it just sounded like his vibing ability under a different name. He was hoping as much at least.

 

“Listen,” he began, “back on my own world I used to be a meta human – a post human – too. I was the fastest man alive, fast enough to travel through time and sometimes to other universes. But I can’t anymore, there’s something about this world that made me lose my powers. I’ve lost my connection to the speed force too.” Barry briefly considered explaining what that was when Cisco looked confused at the term but then decided against it. It wasn’t relevant. “There was someone like you on my world, and I’m guessing you have similar powers. He could open portals as well as vibe. Is that something you can do?”

 

“No,” Cisco answered succinctly and Barry’s heart dropped into his stomach.

 

He was never getting home.

 

He was going to die here in this hell he’d helped create.

 

This was his punishment for trying to be happy.

 

Cisco continued talking but it sounded like static in his ears. Barry was going to have to watch his mum die. He’d seen enough death from radiation since the Carrier fell and the sky was blackened to know what she was going to go through. The internal bleeding was only the start; it would get much worse before it was over. She would suffer. Then it was probably only a matter of time before his dad succumbed too. Or maybe Barry himself would be next. Maybe that would be a mercy.

 

But he didn’t want to die like that. He’d seen the fear and pain in their patients’ eyes and he wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. It was a horrible death, a lingering death for those who hadn’t been lucky enough – hah! – to get a high enough dose of radiation when it first happened to go quickly.

 

He thought of all the times he’d wanted to die, to just be gone. Quick. Not like this though. Not pain and fear with no end in sight. It was going to hurt. In more ways than one. He was scared. He was going to have to bury his mum again. Maybe his dad too. And then he was going to suffer. Skin burning and blistering. Choking on his own fluids. Each breathe a struggle.

 

He was stuck here.

 

There was no way out.

 

His vision tunnelled.

 

He was going to die and he had taken the whole world with him.

 

Oh god. What had he done?

 

How could he be so—

 

Cisco slapped him.

 

Barry’s cheek smarted and he reached up to touch it, still feeling a little out of himself. It didn’t really hurt, just kind of tingled, but the shock of the slap had been enough to bring him back to himself again. As he gingerly prodded at his cheek, he suddenly registered just how hard he was breathing and how lightheaded he felt.

 

Cisco reached out tentatively and took a hold of his upper arm and Barry leant into the touch like a drowning man reaching for a life boat. “Hey, man, are you okay?”

 

Barry laughed, wildly and hysterically, and he only laughed harder when he saw the disconcerted look on Cisco’s face. Barry was very decidedly not okay.

 

It took a while for him to calm down, and by then Cisco had led him off into one of the smaller labs and gotten him to sit down, thrusting an unopened bottle of water in his face as if distracting the crazy man with something to do would make him slightly less crazy. Barry chugged it down like he hadn’t had a drink in days.

 

Cisco eyed him suspiciously and a little fearfully the whole time and it hurt to see that expression on the face of his friend.

 

“Sorry for getting a little hysterical on you there,” Barry apologised.

 

Cisco shrugged but Barry knew him enough to know he was only feigning casualness. “No big deal. I think we’re all feeling it.”

 

“Yeah,” Barry agreed, picking at the water bottle’s label. He wondered if Cisco had seen exactly what part Barry had played in the current situation the world was in. He hoped not. Even though they were practically strangers, Barry didn’t want this Cisco thinking badly of him, knowing what he’d done. Indifference was fine, he could handle that. But outright hatred? It would be like a physical wound.

 

“Like I was saying,” Cisco said, “I know of someone who kind of has the powers you described. The portal things.”

 

Barry’s head snapped up to look at Cisco and the empty bottle dropped to bounce hollowly against the floor. “You do? Can I meet them?”

 

Cisco’s face scrunched up in that familiar way it did when he was contemplating a difficult problem. Barry could have almost cried. "I can try to get in contact with her, but I'm not promising anything. There's a lot more going on than just this."  
  
"I know, I know,” Barry was quick to reassure. “Anything you can do."

 

Cisco nodded, a sense of finality to the action. Barry expected that to be the end of it but Cisco continued to stand there, a range of emotions flitting across his face. He sucked on his teeth before turning his whole body towards Barry.  
  
"Hey, we know each other in your timeline?" he asked.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Friends?"  
  
Barry didn’t hesitate to answer. "Best."

 

Cisco considered that for a moment, really seeming to look at Barry properly for the first time.  
  
"Well, I hope this all works out for you then. Someone will be in touch." And at that he was leaving.

 

Barry couldn’t help the feeling of abandonment his departure created, as irrational as it was. This Cisco didn’t know him or owe him anything, Barry understood that. He also understood that this world was in so much trouble his own little search for a way off it seemed tiny in comparison. It was no wonder Cisco wasn’t prioritising helping him. Still, the way he walked away so easily hurt. Perhaps Barry had expected him to feel some reverberation of the friendship they’d had in the previous timeline through his powers. His last question had made it seem like that was a possibility. But obviously not, because he’d walked away without even a backwards glance.

 

It was only after he was gone and Barry was finding his way out of Star Labs that he realised he’d never given Cisco an address. Or his last name, for that matter. Maybe Cisco had just been humouring the crazy person. Barry hoped against all hope that wasn’t the case.  
  
He walked home in the dark, emotions tangled up inside him. His mother was dying. It would take a couple of weeks or more, but no one yet had survived the radiation poisoning. After that, it was only a matter of time before something happened to his father. It might be the radiation or it might be the desperate people who'd do anything to survive but Barry knew that this wasn't a world that would last much longer. It was only a matter of time before it imploded.  
  
He shouldn't feel relieved that Cisco was offering him a way out, a lifeboat off this sinking reality. He should feel guilt, indecision.  
  
But he didn't. There was nothing but relief. If Cisco came through, he would leave this world as quickly as he could and without a second thought.  
  
When he arrived home, his mother's smile was tight and she kept sneaking worried glances between him and his father. Henry didn't know yet then.  
  
Barry kept his mouth shut.  
  
Their daily routine remained unchanged but at any moment Barry expected... Well, he didn't know what he expected. Just something.

 

But as days turned into a week, he began to lose hope. His mother’s condition continued to worsen incrementally and it was only her stubbornness that had kept the truth from Henry for so long. One morning, as Barry was in the bathroom, helping her sweep up the tangles of hair that fell from her head daily when she brushed it, he said, “You should tell him.”

 

“I know,” she replied sadly, “but it will break his heart. He’ll have enough time to grieve when I’m gone.”

 

Barry doubted that. He didn’t think his dad would last long without his mother.

 

Hopefully he wouldn’t be around long enough to find out.

 

 

***

 

“Let me out, Barry,” Eobard sing-songed from behind the bars as Barry paced.

 

Bringing food to the future speedster was still an unfortunate part of his daily routine and every time he came to this abandoned house, Eobard would try and bait him. He wasn’t even sure if Eobard still had his speed. He may have lost it the same way Barry had but he wasn’t game to take off the speed dampeners and test that theory. He would often think of simply asking Eobard if he still felt a connection with the speed force but was sure he would answer in whatever way benefitted him most, regardless of the truth. If he did have his speed and managed to escape, Barry had no doubt he would strand him here in this apocalyptic wasteland.

 

And yet, as Cisco’s promise to try to help seemed less and less likely to come to fruition, the pull to let the speedster loose and see what happened grew more and more tempting.

 

 

***

 

 

“Barry!”

 

His mother’s panicked voice had him racing down the stairs as quickly as he could in the semi-darkness.

 

“Mum! What is it? What’s happening?”

 

She was by the window and unearthly lighting flashed across her face. He was pulled back to the past, red and yellow crackling around her and the terror in her eyes. The two images didn’t meld though: he was suddenly aware of how much weight she’d lost, how gaunt she looked. Her horror now was resigned.

 

Barry went to her side and looked out the living room window and into the street. Lightning crackled down from the sky, an unearthly magenta colour, hitting the street and briefly illuminating the neighbourhood. Barry caught a glimpse of a face in a window across the street. One of the last survivors of their suburb. There weren’t many left now.

 

The lightning struck again only a few seconds after the first had dissipated. Then again, feeling like it was grower closer all the time. Its path was so regular that Barry was able to predict the exact place it would hit the ground when it finally made it to the patch of road directly in front of the Allen house. It struck and then, instead of fizzling out, it branched out in the shape of nerves and neon arteries and a body formed around them until there was a woman standing there in a space suit.

 

Barry reared back from the window and ran for the front door, heart in his throat.

 

This must be it. This was what he’d been waiting for.

 

But he pulled up short when he was outside and got a better look at the woman. For all intents and purposes, she looked completely normal – except for the luminescent milky whites of her eyes. They glowed with a slight blue tinge and Barry suddenly got the feeling that if he put his fingers near them, he’d feel that tingle of static you used to get off old TV screens just after they’d been turned off.

 

Her space suit was futuristic, not bulky like the kind of things American astronauts wore. That impression was only backed up when he caught sight of the Cyrillic written on it.

 

“I’m Adrianna,” she said once he was close, her accent slight but still noticeable. “Cisco sent me.”

 

“Do you want to come inside?” Barry asked tentatively, not sure what etiquette was appropriate when a woman in a cosmonaut uniform lightening-ed her way to your front doorstep.

 

She didn’t answer but she did follow him when he retraced his steps back into the house. Her motions were efficient, slightly more like a robot than a person although she seemed to be flesh and blood.

 

Nora grabbed at his sleeve as he headed for the kitchen – the only room not covered in cots – with Adrianna in tow. “Barry, what’s going on?”

 

“It’s okay.” He tried to smile reassuringly at her and felt nothing but guilt. “She’s here to help.”

 

His mother eventually nodded and let her fingers slide from his arm. Half of him wanted to grab her hands in his, bring them to his face and water them with tears, beg for her forgiveness. In trying to save her he’d only made her suffer more.

 

He did none of that though. He took a rallying breath and turned away from his mother. That may have been the last time they would ever touch but if Barry pretended it wasn’t, perhaps he’d get another chance.

 

Barry closed the door to the kitchen behind them and then went to sit down, motioning for Adrianna to do the same opposite him. Her opalescent eyes freaked him out and without pupils he was never quite sure where she was looking.

 

“You are not from here.”

 

“No.”

 

“Neither am I,” there was kindness in her smile, “though in a different way.” Adrianna rubbed her hands against her temples. “Do you mind if I take this off?”

 

“No, be my guest.”

 

Barry expected her to remove her helmet. What he didn’t expect her to do was remove her face.

 

There was nothing underneath the mask. No other face at least, just a metallic-looking surface with the same luminosity that had glowed through her eyes when the mask was on. Freed from its cover, it undulated like calm water.

 

“What are you?” He couldn’t help blurting out and immediately felt embarrassed.

 

If she’d had a face, Barry thought she would probably be smiling amusedly right then.

 

“It does not matter.” She spoke – though she had no mouth – and her voice carried the same as it had been doing since she came into existence on his front lawn. “I have only a little power. Not enough to make a difference. But perhaps my little and your little can make something bigger.”

 

“I don’t know if Cisco told you, but I lost my powers. I can’t do anything.”

 

“We will find the Doctor. She can fix this.”

 

“A doctor?” That was her answer? Almost two weeks of waiting in hope and that was all she could suggest? “My dad’s a doctor. A doctor can’t fix this. It’s not that kind of problem.”

 

“No. Not _a_ doctor, _the_ Doctor. She is… different. She will fix you. She will fix the world.”

 

Barry was still sceptical. Everything he had tried while he still had his powers and it hadn’t made a lick of difference. What other options did he have at this point though? It was follow through on this plan or sit around and wait to die.

 

“Where is she? Can you take me to her?”

 

“I can. She will fix this.”

 

“Okay.” Barry slumped back in his chair. This seemed like the first good news he’d had in months. Adrianna was also more confident than even Barry allowed himself to be. Maybe this would work. Stranger things had certainly happened. He felt hope and excitement welling up inside him again but knew that he shouldn’t indulge in it. So much could still go wrong. “So what now?”

 

“We go.”

 

Barry startled. “Right now, you mean?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Adrianna stood and Barry hurried to mirror her. “Where do you—”

 

“Come stand by me.”

 

Once they were side by side, Adrianna clasped her hands together and when she opened them, spreading her arms wide, the universe yawned open in tandem. Before Barry could even think to fear the space on the other side – the same eerie pink lightning that had appeared when Adrianna first arrived, planets (or atoms?) spiking out like sound waves, being ripped apart and reassembled in seconds – it had swallowed them whole.

 

They couldn’t have been in that space for more than a few seconds but it felt like time dilated out in there. In a way, Barry almost felt like he had his powers back. This was what it was like when his adrenaline spiked and the whole world slowed down around him. Logically he knew time was still going at the same pace it always had, it was only his perception of it that was lagging.

 

Unseen and directionless winds whipped silently through the otherworldly space, sending Adrianna’s hair in all directions as they seemed to hover in place, a breath between worlds. Barry looked down and saw the structure of his own hand start to lose its integrity. Skin, then muscle, turning to microscopic particles and being carried away on the wind. He squeezed his eyes shut, a reversion to a more childish state of mind. If he couldn’t see it, it wasn’t happening.

 

The winds dropped away a second later and he knew they were through.

 

He opened his eyes. There were people around them, going about their business, not seeming surprised in the slightest by the appearance of a bright pink portal or the two people who had come out of it. It was dim where they were despite the phosphorescent lighting on the ceiling and walls. It looked vaguely organic. Barry wasn’t sure how they’d achieved that; the Allen household had been on candles since day one.

 

Adrianna strode off with purpose and Barry hurried to keep pace with her. They walked corridors for what felt like miles. Everywhere looked the same and Barry really hoped he’d be shown the way out, because if he wasn’t, it was almost certain he’d get lost somewhere in this maze.

 

“Where are we?” Barry asked, his breath a little laboured from the fast pace Adrianna was keeping.

 

“In the Carrier.”

 

Barry stopped in his tracks and looked around with fresh eyes. “The Carrier? As in the one that crashed?”

 

“Yes.” When she realised he wasn’t following her, Adrianna stopped as well and turned to him. “Is that so surprising?”

 

“No, it’s just, I was outside of it not that long ago. I had no idea it was still operational inside.”

 

“Barely,” Adrianna said dismissively and started walking again. “Come on.”

 

Eventually they reached a room that looked like the cockpit from some ‘90’s sci-fi show. A man laying slouched back in a chair to the right, asleep, caught his eye first. His skin was grotesquely scarred but that wasn’t unusual these days. What was unusual was that he was in a suit. Barry hadn’t seen anyone in one of those in weeks and it looked particularly out of place in the dark and filth of this room.

 

A soft swishing sound drew his attention and he looked to the left to its source.

 

Wings – that was his first impression. But also power. Power that seemed barely restrained within her petite body. So strong it almost felt like a physical presence in the room.

 

She padded towards him on bare feet, her wings – so much like Kendra and Carter’s – hanging relaxed behind her. Her grip was firm as she shook his hand. “I’m Shen.”

 

“The Doctor,” Barry said in awe. Adrianna had been right: she was different.

 

“Yes.”

 

She smiled at him and, despite everything that had happened and was going to happen, he felt some small measure of peace.

 

“Can you help me?”

 

“I can try. You’re trying to get home, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“May I?” She asked, gesturing in the general direction of his chest. Barry had no idea what she was asking to do but at this point what harm could it do? He nodded and she placed her hand there, over his heart.

 

She closed her eyes and nothing else seemed to happen. Barry waited there patiently, more aware of the beating of his heart and his breathing than he had ever been in his life. He tried to stay calm and keep his breathing steady but the longer Shen’s hand remained fixed where it was and her eyes stayed closed, brows drawing together in consternation every so often, the harder it was.

 

Just as it began to feel like he couldn’t take the anticipation any longer, her eyes opened. She blinked a few times and her gaze focussed on Barry.

 

“You belong here now.” Barry’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. “But you have something that doesn’t.”

 

“I don’t know what you—” Barry stopped. He did know what she meant. He yanked the chain around his neck out from beneath his shirt and showed it to her, his excitement growing. “It’s this, isn’t it? This is what you mean.”

 

Barry had been wearing Len’s ring when he came to this timeline. It seemed so long ago now. After the Carrier had crashed and the skies had blackened and they’d starting using their house as a makeshift hospital, Barry had been deathly afraid he’d accidentally lose it or someone would steal it. So he’d taken to wearing it on a chair around his neck at all times. He could hide it beneath his shirt so no one else saw it, and the press of it against his skin was reassuring.

 

She knew about the ring. She knew his body had changed to acclimatise it to this timeline. If she had that kind of power, maybe she really could send him back to where he belonged.

 

The Doctor reached out as if to touch the ring but pulled back at the last minute. “Yes. This will do the trick.”

 

“What are you going to do?”

 

“The ring is something that is, yet shouldn’t be. Its equivalent doesn’t exist in this timeline so it hasn’t adapted like you have. It leaves a tangible trail of crumbs back to your timeline for anyone who has the power to see it.”

 

Something about that statement didn’t sit right with Barry but before he could really think it over, Shen had continued speaking and the feeling was swept under in trying to understand her explanation.

 

“I can’t put you straight back where you came from. That place doesn’t exist anymore. But I can use the ring to walk back time. I don’t have enough power to do it for the whole world – God knows I’ve tried – but the temporal field of one person? I think I can manage.

 

“I can get you far back enough that your body will have its full powers. It’s up to you then what you do with them.”

 

He could have his powers back. Long enough to undo everything, to go back with Thawne and…

 

He stopped that train of thought before it could start to make him rethink the plan. There was only one sensible way out of this and he had to take it.

 

“Okay,” said Barry, shuffling nervously from one foot to the other, “so how does it work?”

 

“I’ll need to reach inside you in the most literal sense. Do you want to do it now? You can have some time to think about it.”

 

“No, I know this is what needs to be done.” He bounced up and down a couple of times, shook out his hands and then took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m ready.”

 

He wasn’t sure what to expect as Shen aimed her hand for where Len’s ring lay on his chest. He was willing to put up with a lot of pain if it was going to work though. One part of him hoped it did hurt. It would be penance for everything he’d done to the world and those he loved. Maybe this time he’d learn his lesson. He didn’t get good things.

 

Just as Shen’s fingers touched the ring, something she’d said earlier came back to Barry. The ring didn’t have an equivalent in this timeline. So where was Len? Maybe, just maybe, Barry could find him in his last minutes here. Maybe he could even bring him with him when he left…

 

Barry grabbed Shen’s hand before it could dip inside his chest.

 

“Can I ask you one question before you start?” Shen looked confused but nodded anyway. “There’s someone I was trying to find here, the man who gave me this ring. Can you locate him?”

 

“I can try. Think of him for me.”

 

Barry pictured intense eyes, so much like looking up at a winter sky, and sarcastic lips that pulled wide for the most beautiful smile. Len’s salt and pepper close-cropped hair, almost entirely grey now, and the grace of his nimble hands. Barry remembered the feel of those fingers running through his own hair, the warmth of Len’s body pressed up against his and the feel of his heartbeat under his palm.

 

He felt Shen’s fingers settle on his temples again. Then suddenly it was like being pulled through the floor, like being dropped into water that went down forever. Barry flailed and opened his eyes to… Len’s apartment?

 

He was standing behind the couch, looking out the window at the street below. There was no one out there, but there rarely ever was. The apartment building was located fairly close to the industrial estate and even traffic was light except for shift-change times. The light outside was murky, like that moment just before sunrise or after sunset. It was still a shock though; he’d been living in darkness for what felt like forever now and any natural light would have made him wince.

 

As he stood there, looking out, arms slipped around his waist, warmth bracketed his back and Len’s chin came to rest on his shoulder. He turned his head a little and pressed a kiss against Barry’s morning scruff.

 

“Hey. Sleep well?”

 

Barry opened his eyes for real and breathed deep. His vision swam, his cheeks were wet. He wanted to go back, back to that place and feeling that didn’t exist anymore. Until he’d heard Len speak just then, he hadn’t realised he’d already begun to forget the unique cadence and drawl of his voice. How could he have ever forgotten that?

 

He reached up to wipe the tears from his face and something jostled uncomfortably on his forehead. He looked up, vision clearing, to find Shen with her arms elbow-deep inside his head. It was like a funhouse mirror though, like his forehead had warped and contracted outwards to allow room for her to fit inside the small doorway that opened between his eyebrows and hairline. Or maybe her arms had shrunk. He was having trouble keeping track of the proportion of things. That amount of arm should not have been able to be shoved inside his head without poking at the back of his skull either. A calmly hysterical thought flashed through his mind and he felt like he cracked apart with laughter while also staying still and silent. His head was like the Tardis: bigger on the inside.

 

When Shen took her hands out of his mind, reality snapped back into place like a rubber band released from between two outstretched fingers.

 

“He’s gone,” she said calmly.

 

“Gone?” Barry repeated, not quite understanding. Gone could mean any number of things. Had Len left Central City for somewhere else? Had he died in the chaos following the crash of the Carrier? Or had he skipped timelines somehow?

 

“He’s not on this world. He’s not on any world.”

 

Barry grew frustrated. “What does that even mean?”

 

“I’m sorry.” She said, running a hand through her short, dark hair, and she did genuinely seem apologetic. “I can’t say for sure. My powers are limited, a fraction of what they used to be. If I push too hard, I won’t have enough let to be able to help you.”

 

“No, it’s okay. Thank you for trying. You can start now.”

 

“This is probably going to hurt,” she warned.

 

“Wha—”

 

Barry was cut off by her hand plunging into his chest, pushing the ring in along with it.

If Barry had to describe what he felt then, he’d start with the metaphor of water. Depending on conditions, it could exist in three states: solid, liquid or gas. To the human eye, these three states were completely different but on a molecular level the basic atomic compound didn’t change all that much. Usually when Barry entered the Speed Force there was a feeling of coming home, of welcoming, like slipping into a warm pool. What he felt now was an echo of that. Instead of a comforting feeling, it was like all of time and space were being funnelled through him all at once, like the proverbial camel through the eye of a needle. His body and mind felt too small for what it was being put through.

 

The Speed Force now felt hard and sharp, like ice. Getting through it was a fight that hurt him and left him exhausted. He wanted to scream but he didn’t feel like he was inside his body. The feeling built and built and at every moment he thought, “This is as much as I can take,” but then it got a little worse and he learnt he could always take more pain.

 

Then it was over and he felt the lightning thrumming through his veins. It was like coming home.

 

Shen had fallen back into a chair, looking drained but accomplished, her wings trailing on the floor. “How do you feel?” she asked.

 

Barry clenched his hand into a fist, felt the power coursing through his veins. Then he extended his hand out in front of his face, palm flat, and let it move until it blurred with speed. “You did it. I feel amazing.” He flashed over to her and took her hands between his. “Thank you.”

 

“Good.” She smiled up at him contentedly as if she knew things would be alright now. Barry hoped she was right. “Now go and make a better world.”

 

Barry didn’t have to be asked twice. He ran. It didn’t matter that he’d already forgotten the way Adrianna had taken him through the Carrier, he just phased through walls until he was outside in perpetual night. From there he knew the way.

 

The journey from New York to Central City was both the longest and shortest journey he’d ever taken. He went directly to the house where he kept Thawne, deliberately not thinking about the reason he didn’t go anywhere else first.

 

When Thawne saw him flash in front of his cage and go for the lock, an evil smile bloomed across his face. Barry couldn’t look him in the eye. He just grabbed him by the collar of his suit and calculated the best route to somewhere open enough that he’d be able to reach the speeds needed to time travel.

 

Thawne wasn’t going to let the moment pass without comment though. “I told you you’d beg me to do it, didn’t I?” He said with a smirk.

 

“Shut up,” Barry grit out. He wished he could kill him right then and there. He needed him though. He couldn’t do what needed to be done himself.

 

He ran, faster and faster, trying to convince himself the whole time that what he was doing was right. Of course it was. This place was a literal hell. And yet, the price to get everything back to the way it was still seemed too high.

 

For the third time in his life, he watched his mother be murdered.

 

When it was done, he ran back to blinding sunshine.

 

 

***

 

 

Barry had thought he would crave company after the hellish few weeks he’d spent on the other earth. He had thought he would seek out the signs of life that had been missing there: people, animals, plants, sunlight. Instead he found himself heading straight to Len’s apartment.

 

It was unchanged since the last time he’d been there. Dust motes wafted in the twilight glow, bestowing an otherworldly look on the otherwise completely bland room. Barry walked through it, disturbing the air, sending specks of reflected light careening in his wake. The apartment was otherwise completely still and silent.

 

As the shadows crept up the walls and finally faded away, Barry moved into the bedroom. He fisted the cold sheets, balled them up in his hands. Chased warmth and a scent he was beginning to forget.

 

He lay in the bed, curled on his side, and didn’t sleep.

 

He wished he had a picture of Len. A picture of how he was when they were alone. Or even with Lisa and Hartley. It would be easy enough to get one of his mug shots or security footage from a heist or media coverage of one of their fights, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted Len curled up on the couch or in the kitchen cooking or asleep in bed, looking soft and human. He wanted photos, even badly taken photos, out of focus photos, of the two of them together. Happy. But he didn’t have a single one. He hadn’t realised at the time that a day would come when he’d want them desperately.

 

Barry heard the door open but didn’t turn towards it or get up. A click-clacking and then there was a pause, followed by the swishing of cloth and the clunk of heels hitting the ground. Soft feet padded across the bedroom floor – not a wrong sound, but not the right one either – and the bed dipped behind him.

 

“Shove over,” Lisa said, nudging him with her hip.

 

Barry made the obligatory grumbling noises but wriggled over a little bit, enough for Lisa to slide in behind him but not enough to leave the warm patch he’d made entirely.

 

“Your feet are freezing.”

 

Lisa hummed, cuddling up closer to his pocket of warmth under the blankets and shoving her feet against the back of his calves. “You love it. Don’t lie.”

 

They lapsed into silence as Lisa’s breathing evened out and the space between them grew warm.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Where did you go?”

 

“I went and screwed up. Again. But I fixed it.”

 

“Did you try to save him?” That _had_ been one of the goals of his trip back in time. He’d let himself get distracted, become complacent just having both of his parents in his life, happy and alive. If only he’d started looking for Len in earnest earlier. Maybe he would have been able to bring him back to this version of the present. Maybe Barry could have had his lover and Lisa could have had her brother and everything would be right again. But no, what was done was done. He couldn’t change it now. Thinking about it – obsessing over it – wouldn’t lead anywhere good.

 

Barry didn’t know what Lisa read in his silence but after a few seconds she said, quietly, “Thank you. For trying.”

 

“I’m sorry I ran away.”

 

“It’s okay. I would have too if I could.”

 

Lisa curled forward until her forehead lay against the nape of his neck, her breath hot against his skin.

 

“Did McCulloch give you a lift here?”

 

“Who?” Lisa asked drowsily.

 

“Never mind.”

 

Lisa stifled a yawn. “Hartley’s got a date tonight but he said he’d bring us breakfast in the morning.”

 

“Yeah?” Barry hoped Lisa attributed the excitement in his voice to an enthusiasm for breakfast food.

 

“Yeah.”

 

They lapsed into silence again and Barry was beginning to nod off when Lisa’s voice, so quiet between them, drew him back into wakefulness.

 

"He was a good brother."  
  
"He was a good man."  
  
Her hands fisted in the back of his shirt, pulling it tight across his chest, and her head dropped down between his shoulder blades. She shook as full-bodied sobs racked her body. Barry started to turn, wanted to comfort her, but she stiffened up and he suddenly remembered something Hartley had said to him. He’d told Barry that the Snarts were like cats, going off on their own to lick their wounds. They were private people, guarded. It was probably already a big thing for Lisa to let her guard down this much around him.

 

So he didn’t turn around, and Lisa relaxed behind him.

 

He did reach back though, tentatively at first until her smaller hand grabbed his immediately and desperately. Then he clung to her like it was the most important thing in the world.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

The next day Hartley arrived with breakfast as promised.

 

Barry awoke to a familiar spray of light across a familiar ceiling. Not the ceiling he’d been waking up to for the last month and a bit, but one that he’d stared up at enough over the last year to memorise the unique peculiarities of. Like the water stain in the far corner that looked like an old man’s head with an exaggeratedly large nose, or the perpetual cobweb between the curtain rail and ceiling (“You should dust,” Barry said one day, arm slung over Len’s chest. “He’s not doing any harm up there,” Len had replied).

 

In some ways, he felt lighter than he had in a long time. The familiar ache of losing Len still curled in that place between his gut and heart like a heavy weight that couldn’t be ignored, but today he felt like he could carry it. Not with ease, no. Never with ease. But he could struggle along with it and still move forward.

 

Len was dead.

 

That was a fact.

 

He’d tried to change it but he couldn’t.

 

So that was that.

 

Barry rubbed the sleep from his eyes and tried to summon the energy to get out of bed. He couldn’t spend any more days here. Len wouldn’t want that. He needed to get up and get going. Try to regain some sense of normality. No more dwelling on what-ifs and might-have-beens.

 

The gentle murmur of voices coming from outside the bedroom reminded Barry he wasn’t alone anymore. There were others going through this as well. He didn’t have to be alone.

 

Hartley and Lisa were already sitting on the couch and chatting in hushed voices by the time Barry finally dragged himself out of bed mid-morning, still in his pyjamas and feeling like he could have done with a few more hours sleep.

 

The friendly smile Hartley sent his way was almost enough to make him cry in relief though. Barry walked straight over to him, falling onto his knees once he got to the couch and knee-walking the last bit until he was practically on top of Hartley and pulling him into a bear hug. Hartley put up a token resistance before he was holding him back just as tightly. As some point Lisa piled on top of them and enfolded them both between her arms.

 

Barry could have stayed like that for hours, feeling safe and comforted, but then Lisa whispered, “Joe texted. You’ve got 15 minutes to get in to work,” and he was struggling to disentangle himself from Hartley and Lisa’s clinging limbs, laughing as they tried to pull him back.

 

Hartley thrust a plastic bag full of breakfast and his phone at him when he re-entered the living room from getting changed and said, tongue in cheek, “Have a good day at work, honey.”

 

Just as sarcastically, Barry returned, “Yes, dear,” as Lisa laughed in the bachground.

 

God, Barry had missed this.

 

***

 

On his way to work, Barry detoured via Joe’s house, flashing so fast into his room that no one would be able to see him. It was exactly as he’d left it two days (but also over a month) ago and he took the time to run his fingers across the clothes hanging in his closet, his desk, stopping at his full length mirror.

 

Did he look older? He felt older. He’d been through so much in such a short period of time, surely it should show upon his face. He tilted his head back and forth, looking at himself from different angles and under different light. He pulled at the skin of his cheeks and forehead. His jaw was a little sharper maybe, the darkness under his eyes more pronounced. Or he could just be imagining it, seeing what he thought he should see. In reality, he had no solid idea of how time travel affected him physically.

 

Maybe his body snapped back to the point when he’d left in the same way new memories started filtering in when he made a change to the timeline. Could he live a thousand lives, jumping from one version of the future to the next, pressing reset in between? What would be the point of it though? Changing the timeline never resulted in anything good happening. If his recent foray had taught him anything, it was better the devil you know. 

 

He quickly changed into something a little less casual but paused when he had his shirt off. Len’s ring hung around his neck, and he fingered the body-warm metal as he looked at himself in the mirror. This had been the only thing to save him from that other timeline. He could have been stuck there if Len hadn’t sent this small piece of himself back for Barry.

 

With some reluctance he slid the chain from around his neck and placed it in the top drawer of his bedside table. It would be safer there.

 

By the time he raced out of the house, he was already 10 minutes late.

 

 

***

 

 

“Dude!” Cisco greeted him as he strolled into the cortex later that evening. “Not cool.”

 

“Um…” Barry paused, looking around him to see what Cisco might be talking about but finding nothing. He hedged his bets. “Sorry?”

 

“You better be!”

 

“Also, what am I apologising for?”

 

Cisco stalked towards him, mobile phone extended out in front of him.

 

Barry swore under his breath. Damn it, Hartley! Right before his eyes was evidence enough to almost make him regret messing up the timeline in whichever way he had to get Hartley back to the way he was: a candid photo of him and Lisa from this morning, still sound asleep and curled together under the blankets. To add insult to injury, Hartley had sent it from Barry’s own phone. At least Barry wouldn’t be reduced to the humiliating levels of having to ask Cisco to send him the photo. Keepsakes were suddenly so much more important to him now and this photo would be the first of many, he was sure.

 

Barry looked up from the phone with what he hoped was an apologetic smile and offered: “Hartley’s a dick?”

 

“Damn right he is,” Cisco huffed and turned away, seemingly mollified by that vague explanation.

 

Hartley might have taken the picture, but Barry guessed that Lisa had her own reasons for sending it.

 

 

***

 

 

It was funny how quickly Barry adapted back into normal life.

 

He supposed he kind of had to because – with the exception of Lisa, and even she didn’t know the details – no one had the slightest idea of what he’d done. If he acted strangely it would bring up all kinds of questions that he was too ashamed to answer. He didn’t want his friends to know about what a screw up he was or how he’d managed to ruin the entire world for his own selfish reasons. They mustn’t know so not being okay wasn’t an option.

 

Work kept him moderately busy and Flash business filled in the rest of the time. If he got a spare moment he’d go looking for Lisa or Hartley and they’d shoot the breeze for an hour or two. Sometimes Flash business and Lisa/Hartley time overlapped. Then it was an effort to be professional and not just indulge in banter and let them get away with whatever they wanted. He spent almost every night at West house where he had not only Joe but Iris and Wally close by most of the time. It was really only at night, when it was dark and he was trying to fight his way to sleep, that he was alone with his thoughts. Some nights were harder than others.

 

 

***

 

 

The lift dinged and the doors opened onto the precinct foyer.

 

Barry slipped his way between the people waiting to go down, raising his coffee cup over his head so it wouldn’t be jostled by anyone. Officers milled about in the bull pen but it was fairly quiet for that time of the day.  Joe wasn’t on shift so Barry greeted the few officers he was friendly with but otherwise headed straight for his lab.

 

He’d only gotten a few steps up the stairs that lead up to the second floor when Barry heard Captain Singh call his name. He turned, one hand still on the banister, and found the captain standing at the foot on the stairs. “Can I see you in my office, Mr Allen?”

 

Barry’s feet felt a lot heavier coming down the stairs than they had going up. Across the room Singh slipped through his office doorway and started pulling the blinds shut, sealing it off from the rest of the bull pen. Barry’s feet carried him there with little input from his brain, his neck prickling as he imagined everyone in the room staring at him and judging him.

 

As Singh closed the door behind him and they both took a seat, a million possibilities flashed through Barry’s head. He went over every case he’d worked on in the last week, trying to think where he could have screwed up. He couldn’t think of a single thing, so he went over it again. Sometimes having a mind that worked at super speed was his worst enemy.

 

In an effort to calm his racing mind and distract himself, Barry started mentally listing off the items around Singh’s office: his awards behind him on the wall, the potted plant in the corner, and on his desk his computer, keyboard, pen holder, an inbox (of the old, physical kind), his phone…

 

Then it dawned on Barry what was missing and he shrunk even further into his chair. He had an overwhelming urge to dip his head and shield his eyes but knew that would come off as incredibly suspicious. Despite the changes he’d made to the past, Lisa must have stolen Singh’s name plate in this timeline as well. Which meant it was still hidden away under a stack of files in the bottom drawer of his lab’s desk. He really hoped that wasn’t what he’d been called in to be interrogated about.

 

Singh stared at him for several long moments, fingers steepled under his chin and Barry squirmed under the intense look. Eventually Singh sighed and asked, “What’s going on with you, Barry?”

 

Barry sat up straight in his seat. “I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered automatically. His palms sweated. Ignorance was his best bet. If it was Flash-related, it was better not to confirm anything unless Singh said it himself; if it was Lisa-stealing-his-name-plate-related, Barry was going to deny everything completely; and if it was work related, he literally had no idea. “Have I done something wrong, Captain?”

 

“No,” Singh was quick to reassure. “The quality of your work – unlike your ability to be on time, but that’s a whole other matter – is never an issue. I’ve just noticed you’ve been… off lately. Is something going on outside of work?”

 

Barry thought he’d been doing well. He’d worked so hard to seem normal, like he hadn’t lost the love of his life or caused the world to burn. None of his friends had said anything and he thought he’d gotten away with it. But maybe he wasn’t so clever. Maybe his friends just pitied him too much to bring it up.

 

“Anything you tell me stays in this room,” Singh said. Barry looked up into his eyes and saw compassion there. It wasn’t an expression he was used to seeing on the captain’s face. He almost would have been more comfortable with Singh’s usual exasperated frustration. This look left him feeling raw and flayed open. “I promise.”

 

Barry sank forward in his seat and rubbed his hands over his eyes. There were a lot of things he could have said, but he picked the one that was easy to explain and accounted for whatever Singh had picked up on.

 

“There’s everything that happened with my dad,” Singh nodded in understanding, “but I was also dating this guy, for about a year.” He looked off to the side, at the closed blinds. “It was going really well, I was crazy about him, but… he died too.”

 

Silence stretched out between them and Barry kept his eyes averted.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“No, it’s okay. I mean, it’s not but…” Barry trailed off. His throat felt constricted but he didn’t really know how to finish that sentence anyway. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t fair.

 

“I’m guessing since this is the first I’ve heard about it that Joe doesn’t know.”

 

“No,” Barry said, shaking his head. “We were keeping quiet.”

 

Singh nodded, like he understood that all too well. “Do you want to take some more personal leave? We can come up with a story if you don’t want to tell Joe the truth yet.”

 

Barry considered it for a moment but the thought of so much down time, left to his own devices, was overwhelming. “No. I like working. It keeps me busy.”

 

“Okay,” Singh said doubtfully, “but if you change your mind…”

 

“I’ll let you know,” he assured him.

 

Barry took that as his cue to leave and Singh trailed him to the door, opening it for him.

 

“You take care of yourself, Barry.”

 

“I’ll try.”

 

 

***

 

 

“It’s a real locked-room mystery,” explained Joe, climbing the steps up to the second-storey bar. “Windows and doors were secured from the inside while the victim counted up for the night. Security footage from the street shows no one entering or exiting the building after closing, and the only other person with a key has an alibi. There’s no sign of forced entry.”

 

They were out in a rundown area of Keystone after receiving a call about a murder. Barry wasn’t familiar with this particular district but it wasn’t all that far from Len’s apartment. Just judging from the building, this bar was even more rundown and dubious than Saints and Sinners which was really saying something.

 

Barry hefted his forensic bag higher on his shoulder. “Have we got a cause of death?”

 

“The medical examiner’s on her way still. The vic’s all cut up though so we’re guessing loss of blood. Haven’t been able to find the murder weapon yet but the perp could have taken it with him.”

 

The crime scene photographers were still working when they arrived at the entrance to the bar so they stood there and waited, surveying the scene from afar.

 

There was a lot of blood, some pooling around the victim’s body but a whole lot more of it like millions of horizontal tear drops along the walls, like it had been flicked there over and over again by someone spinning in circles with a wet paint brush. As far as Barry could tell, there wasn’t a single killing blow on the victim, just a thousand tiny ones.

 

His impression was only cemented when they actually got in the room and he could examine the body up close. It was like he’d been in a whirlwind of glass shards, like that time…

 

Barry stood up and surveyed the room, seeing what he’d overlooked when he first entered, too intent on getting a look at the body: The entire wall behind the bar was covered in mirrors. Their reflective surfaces were the only place in the room that had been spared from the bloodbath. Barry knew exactly what had happened here.

 

“It’s Mirror Master.”

 

Joe was still examining the body and he looked up at Barry from his crouched position. “What?”

 

“He’s using mirrors. Creating Einstein-Rosen bridges between any two reflective surfaces and bringing himself through them,” Barry explained, getting more excited the further he spoke, trying to illustrate his theory with broad hand movements. “That’s how he got into and out of this locked room. Then he used mirror shards to cut this guy up. I bet if we look into the wounds…” Barry dug through his bag for a pair of tweezers and then knelt down and delicately dipped them into the victim’s open wounds, not having luck on the first or second tries, but on the third— he brandished the tweezers in front of Joe, a small fragment of something gripped between the pincers. “If we get this cleaned off, I bet we’ll find it’s a glass shard with a silver or aluminium coating.”

 

Joe shook his head. “This world just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

 

“You can say that again,” Barry said, placing the shard into an evidence bag. He should have known the protracted silence that followed heralded something bad coming, but he was too busy going through the routine of sealing and labelling the bag that it went completely unnoticed.

 

“You recognise this mirror guy, Barr? What’d you call him? Mirror Master?” Joe asked, and when Barry turned to look at him, he realised there was a look of suspicion on his face. “Because this is all new to me but you seem to know an awful lot about him already.”

 

Barry suddenly realised his mistake. McCulloch didn’t exist anymore, had never existed in fact. Not on this world at least. He had no way of explaining how he knew what he knew. He needed Joe not to look into this lead. If he did, he’d find nothing and either think Barry had lost the plot or suspect the truth: that he’d been back to the past and changed the present, and that this knowledge he shouldn’t have was gleaned from that other timeline. Barry didn’t want anyone to know what he’d done. Running back into the past had seemed like the best and only option in the heat of the moment, but now he looked back on it with shame. All the unnecessary suffering he’d caused an entire world… he’d try to keep it a secret as long as he could.

 

“Yeah. I mean, I used to,” Barry fumbled. “I don’t think this is the same guy though. McCulloch wouldn’t do this.”

 

“This… McCulloch? Have you seen him recently?”

 

“No, not for a while. Actually, you know what? I don’t think he’s around anymore. He might have even gone back to Scotland.” Joe was looking at him like he was a couple of seconds away from calling him out on his lie. Barry didn’t blame him. The only thing to do was to bring the conversation back around to the case at hand. “He used to run with the Rogues though. This new guy could have been brought in to fill McCulloch’s absence.”

 

Joe looked at him like he knew what Barry was doing – the slight tilt to his head and his eyebrow raised just a tick – but he let it slide after a moment’s silence. “I guess we could try to track down some of the other Rogues, pump ‘em for information. It’s the best lead we’ve got at the moment.”

 

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

 

Joe didn’t look impressed; this time his left eyebrow was raised as high as it would go. “Really, Barry?”

 

“What?”

 

“You managed to rustle them up pretty quickly when Vandal Savage attacked, can’t you help me out?”

 

So that had still happened. But how had they defeated Vandal without McCulloch? Why was Barry missing those memories? “I guess I could try.”

 

“Thank you. That’s all I’m asking,” said Joe. “Okay, well I’m going to ring the precinct, give ‘em the heads up this is meta related. You do your thing.”

 

Barry sighed and turned his attention back to the crime scene. At first glance the murder itself seemed like a message, and an anonymous one at that, but if this new Mirror Master was anything like his predecessor – or any of the Rogues for that matter – there’d be something else in the room, some ostentatious calling card. Barry just had to find it.

 

He looked at the body first but it was unremarkable except for the amount of damage it had taken. The mirror shards that had ended up in the wounds could have been what Barry was looking for but it seemed a little subtle. You’d have to already know about Mirror Master to make the connection. When he considered the spectacle the body and blood made, he really didn’t think subtlety was high on the list of priorities for the murderer when he was going about his business.

 

Next he examined the blood flecks on the walls and windows. From afar no pattern was immediately obvious and Barry tried squinting his eyes and, when that didn’t work, getting up closer. As he brought his eyes in and out of focus, he was hoping for an image or a message to emerge, like with those magic eye images he’d obsessed over for a brief period as a kid. If only he looked at it in the right way, he thought, something would suddenly jump out at him.

 

Nothing did though.

 

In hindsight, the answer was fairly obvious and Barry felt silly for not realising it sooner.

 

The mirrors. The against-all-odds perfectly spotless mirrors.

 

Barry didn’t doubt that he’d find no trace of blood on this side of the mirror, but on the other side… The side he couldn’t reach… In the mirror dimension…

 

There were a couple of officers still milling about in the bar and out in the hallway. Barry didn’t recognise any of them by name and so he just called out, “hey,” to the nearest one and that drew everyone else’s attention as well.

 

“Close the blinds and cut the lights.”

 

The officer he’d spoken to looked sceptical but he nevertheless started drawing the drapes over the windows. When he was done, another officer by the door flicked the lights. The room was plunged into darkness.

 

Usually, Barry would have to spray with luminol to get blood to light up as well as what they were currently seeing. Mirror Master had obviously done the legwork for him. He wanted this to be seen.

 

There, spanning the whole wall of mirrors, was scrawled in luminescent blood _Where’s Snart?_

 

“That’s not on this side of the mirror, is it?”

 

Barry turned from the message to find Joe standing in the doorway, phone held out in his hand like he’d been going to put it in his pocket and got distracted halfway.

 

“No, it’s not.”

 

“I really hate this town sometimes.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

Barry was patrolling that night, running the streets of the twin cities, when he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time, it really depended on how you looked at it.

 

Either way, he was running past the court house and towards the commercial district when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a pane of glass behaving in a way panes of glass usually didn’t. It _rippled._

 

He’d already shot past it by the time he properly registered what he’d seen, so he did a lap of the block and arrived back in front of the window just in time to see the second person stepping out of it. The first, a man, was dapperly dressed, looking like he’d just walked straight out of the 40s. The blonde who accompanied him seemed to have taken cues from the same era but added a modern twist.

 

His arrival didn’t go unnoticed, the lightning trail that followed him impossible to conceal at night. Mirror Master and his friend didn’t immediately go on the defensive though. In fact, they seemed positively nonchalant.

 

“Hello, Flash,” the man said, taking a few steps closer with a confident swagger, hands in his pockets.

 

Barry relaxed from his stopping posture and, not wanting to seem like he’d been intimidated, echoed Mirror Master’s approach. In the old timeline he’d learnt all of McCulloch’s tricks so there probably wasn’t anything this Mirror Master could throw at him that he couldn’t handle. Even a trip back to the mirror dimension wouldn’t hold him long now that he knew the trick to it.

 

“What are you up to, Mirror Master?”

 

“Mirror Master?” The man repeated amusedly, his accent as Central City as Barry’s own. “I like it.”

 

“Who are you? Why are you after Snart?”

 

“He tried to kill us,” the man seethed, teeth bared all of a sudden at Len’s name. “I only want to return the favour.”

 

“I can’t let you do that.” Barry could have simply told them that Len wasn’t alive anymore, but a part of him felt like they didn’t deserve that knowledge. Would it have stopped them anyway? They’d killed the man yesterday for no other reason than he couldn’t help them find Len. They were obviously comfortable with murder.

 

“I’d like to see you try to stop us,” said the woman, speaking up for the first time and stepping forward threateningly. Her eyes flashed yellow for the briefest of seconds. Of course, another meta. Barry should have expected as much. He prayed she didn’t have powers like Rainbow Raider.

 

He stood where he was, tense, waiting for the worst, but nothing happened.

 

He shifted his feet, getting ready to run at them, and that’s when it hit.

 

It began subtlety at first with a queasiness in his stomach that he couldn’t quite explain away, a little like car sickness or being on one of those fair rides that spins around and around. He took deep breathes and willed it away. But then his eyes seemed to come unfocussed and he could hardly keep track of the two people in front of him. He squinted and shook his head but it didn’t do any good. In fact, shaking his head made it even worse. Now everything was spinning, his body reeling along with it. He couldn’t stay upright and fell to one knee, hands down on the ground and fingers scrabbling ineffectually to find a handhold in the bitumen road to try and anchor himself. The world was tilting and spinning, expanding and contracting and it took everything in him to stay where he was.

 

It stopped abruptly, like someone slamming their hand down on a spinning coin.

 

Barry’s head still swam and stomach acid burnt his throat as he threw up on the sidewalk. When he had nothing left to bring up he collapsed on his back on the ground, and felt the earth rock like a ship at sea underneath him. It was a good ten minutes before the aftereffects of being whammied with whatever that woman had done to him wore off.

 

Barry groaned as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. He didn’t need to look around to know that Mirror Master and his accomplice were long gone.

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

Lisa was perusing a selection of jewellery when Barry managed to track her down.

 

Surprisingly it was the middle of the day, the store was still open and no one was being held up. How she managed to go under the radar when the Rogues were so well known, Barry would never know.

 

“Are you casing this place?”

 

Lisa looked up at him from underneath her eyelashes, smiling. “Maybe?”

 

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Barry said with a put-upon sigh. “I need some information. Can you help me out?”

 

Lisa considered the necklace selection in front of her for a moment before pointing one out. To Barry’s utter astonishment, the salesperson came, unlocked the cabinet and handed it to her. “Anything for you, Barry.”

 

“What do you know about Mirror Master?”

 

“Mirror Master? Who’s that?” He pulled the grainy photo he’d managed to get off a street security camera from the night before from his pocket and showed it to her. She glanced at it for a second but then turned her attention back to the jewellery. “Oh, Sam Scudder?” Lisa held the necklace up to the light and let it refract against her face, like sunlight hitting a calm ocean surface. “I used to date him.”

 

Well, that wasn’t what Barry had expected. He thought Lisa had better taste than to date other criminals. Although… he supposed it would make things a little easier. If he’d been on the other side of the law, he and Len could have been open about their relationship the whole time. There would have been no risk.

 

It wasn’t worth thinking about now though.

 

“Well, he’s back in town and causing trouble. He’s working with a blonde woman; she’s got some kind of perception warping powers.”

 

“That’d be Rosa. Rosa Dillon.”

 

Lisa handed the necklace back to the salesperson and departed, saying, “I’ll be back for that later.”

 

Barry had no doubt she would be. Probably not during business hours though.

 

“You know her as well?” He asked, chasing after Lisa.

 

“Used to date her too. Then they started dating each other and I was left all on my lonesome,” she said with a pout. “Seriously though, it wasn’t an amicable breakup in either case, and they hate my brother with a passion just ‘cause he tried to kill them once. Or maybe twice. I forget. Some people are so sensitive.”

 

“Yeah, I got that impression. Scudder wrote _where’s Snart?_ in blood at a crime scene I was at yesterday.”

 

Lisa wrinkled her nose up in distaste. “I’m surprised it’s taken them this long to try to get revenge. This was all years ago, like, before the particle accelerator explosion. Let them be,” she advised. “Sooner or later they’ll figure out Lenny’s gone and they’ll go back to petty larceny.”

 

“Yeah, but how many people are going to die in the meantime?” Barry asked. He imagined Scudder and Dillon would keep killing when people continued to tell them what they didn’t want to hear: that no one knew where Len was. That knowledge was safeguarded by Barry, a collection of Rogues, and a bunch of people on a time ship. “Could you let me know if you hear anything useful?”

 

“Like I said: anything for you, Barry,” she said with a wink over her shoulder as she disappeared into the city crowds.

 

 

 

***

 

 

“Morning, Mr Allen,” said Captain Singh as Barry appeared in the entrance to his office where all the other officers on the Mirror Master case were assembled. “Nice of you to join us.”

 

“Sorry, Captain,” Barry said, brandishing the files he’d dug out first thing upon getting into the station that morning. “I got some new information I wanted to follow up on before I presented it to everyone.”

 

An impressed look flashed across Singh’s face so quickly you could have blinked and missed it. Honestly, Barry was a little impressed with himself too for having a legitimate and pertinent reason for being late. There was a first time for everything.

 

“Okay, well if you want to come in and close the door, we can get started.”

 

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Barry said, only then realising he was still loitering outside the room. He hurriedly closed the door behind him and went to stand by Joe.

 

“The victim yesterday was Daniel Buckley,” Singh began, “a small time thief who’s worked with various bigger fish over the years. We believe he worked a job with Snart back in 2013 but – as with all of Snart’s heists – finding reliable evidence of exactly who else was involved is difficult: the man’s infuriately thorough covering his tracks. Buckley left a partial at the crime scene though, so he took the fall. Did two years and only got out a short time ago.”

 

Singh went on to detail what had been discovered at the crime scene the day before, all things Barry already knew: the mysterious circumstances of the murder, the mirror shards in the victim, the message behind the bar.

 

“Our friends at STAR Labs have identified the murder as the work of a meta they’ve called Mirror Master. It’s believed he can manipulate mirrors to travel between places and do the kind of damage we witnessed yesterday. Supreme caution is advised when dealing with him – once we figure out who he is, that is.” Barry raised his hand from where it was crossed over his chest, pointer finger out, feeling like a kid in primary raising his hand for attention from the teacher. “You have something to add, Mr Allen?”

 

“I know who Mirror Master is, and he’s not working alone.”

 

Everyone in the room turned questioning faces towards him and Barry shrank a little under the attention. “How’d you find that out?”

 

“We spoke with one of my CIs,” Joe rushed to explain, and Barry appreciated his quick thinking. “Knew a little bit about the other members on the crew of that job Snart pulled.”

 

“Okay,” Singh said, nodding, “so who are they?”

 

“Sam Scudder and Rosa Dillon,” Barry replied, moving forward to hand both their files to him.

 

One of the officers snorted but Barry didn’t recognise him. His badge said Harris. “Scudder disappeared years ago,” he said condescendingly, “and Dillon’s in the meta prison at Iron Heights.”

 

“She’s not.” I saw her last night, free as a bird, Barry wanted to say but held his tongue.

 

“I was there only a week ago, she’s definitely there.” The officers shared a look that Barry was used to seeing when he posited his more out there theories. There goes Barry Allen, being a weirdo ago. The fact that he’d been proven right about his dad’s innocence didn’t seem to have swayed anyone’s opinion of him in the slightest.

 

Singh was at least giving him the benefit of the doubt: he had his phone dialled and held to his ear already. The room quieted as they all waited with vested interest for someone to pick up on the other end.

 

Singh turned his back to them all as a faint voice came from the handset. “Captain Singh here. Quick question: have you got Rosa Dillon there? Yeah, thanks.” There was a long stretch of silence that Barry surmised someone had either gone to check the cell or the live security footage. “Okay, I might send some people down anyway.”

 

Singh hung up and shot Barry an apologetic look. “They say she’s been there since May. Hasn’t even attempted to escape.”

 

“Told you,” Harris said with a smug grin.

 

Barry wasn’t having a bar of it though. He knew what he’d seen the other night. It couldn’t be anyone else. And Singh must at least have his doubts if he was willing to send officers to see in person. He appealed to the captain, “It’s definitely her that’s helping Scudder out.”

 

“Weirder things have happened,” Singh admitted, hands on hips, with a put-upon sigh. “You and Joe go down to Iron Heights and interview her. See what you can find out.”

 

 

***

 

 

It was a little bit nostalgic going back to Iron Heights again after so long. It also caused a pang in Barry’s chest, that familiar ache of missing his dad. As they waited for a door to open, Joe put his arm around Barry’s shoulder and pulled him in for a sideways hug.

 

“You tell me if this gets to you, okay?”

 

Barry gave him a wan smile. “I will.”

 

The meta wing was separate from the normal prison ward, newly built when it became apparent metas were something the police had to worry about now. Cisco had helped with the power dampening technology installed in all of the cells and so the meta wing had ended up looking a lot like the Star Labs pipeline but with larger rooms and more creature comforts. Barry and Joe were waved through security with a minimum of fuss and escorted to Rosa’s cell.

 

Rosa Dillon was lying on the bed, looking exactly as Barry had seen her the night before except she’d swapped her leather jacket and flared skirt for a prison jumpsuit. She appeared to be asleep but Barry couldn’t imagine how she could be with the bright lights in the prison.

 

“Rosa Dillon?” Joe said, taping on the glass. “We need to talk.”

 

She didn’t respond, nor did she open her eyes.

 

“Dillon, answer me.”

 

Again, no response.

 

Something began to niggle at Barry. This was familiar in an unfamiliar way.

 

“I need to get in that cell.”

 

Joe turned disbelieving eyes on him. “Barry, are you crazy?”

 

Barry had a hunch and there was only one way to find out if he was right. “Let me in.”

 

“Sure,” the guard replied with complete disinterest, “but whatever happens is on your head. She probably won’t kill you but that vertigo shtick is a doozy. Keep your distance from her and try not to look her in the eyes.”

 

There were two doors to get into the cell. The guard talked into his walkie-talkie and the first opened. As soon as Barry passed through into the interim room, it swished closed again. He heard the locks click behind him and then the second door opened.

 

He stepped cautiously into the room but Rosa didn’t pay him any attention. She wouldn’t recognise him outside the suit but Barry still felt a little nervous about it.

 

“Hi, Rosa,” he said. “I’ve got some questions I want to ask you.”

 

She didn’t respond or move. In fact, she hadn’t moved at all since they’d arrived and they’d been making a decent amount of noise outside the cell. Barry would have thought the monotony of her cell would have made any distractions welcome.

 

He took a few more steps closer and then the intercom clicked and the guard’s voice came warningly through the speakers in the room. “Don’t get too close.”

 

She was breathing at least. Barry could make out that much. Otherwise, though, she was completely still.

 

“Rosa?” He said her name louder this time but still no response at all.

 

He took the last few steps to bring him up to the side of the bed and heard the guard getting more and more irate telling him not to. Barry ignored him.

 

He reached out – (“No touching!”) – and jostled Rosa’s shoulder a little.

 

She fell apart.

 

Just shattered.

 

A thousand little mirror shards littered the bed as guards rushed into the room and pushed Barry aside.

 

Rosa Dillon definitely wasn’t in Iron Heights.

 

 

***

 

 

“So she looked you in the eyes and then the world starting spinning?”

 

Cisco had his hands elbow-deep in some machinery in the breach room, a lollipop stick hanging out of his mouth. The lollipop itself was long gone but he’d been gnawing on the stick for the last half hour. He liked to think it made him look sophisticated, like one of those guys in the old time movies with a cigarette. Cigarettes were bad for you though. Not that lollipops were all that good for you either, but on the sliding scale of things that would kill you, they were a lot further down than cigarettes.

 

“Basically,” Barry answered, lounging against a desk. “It was like I was one of those kid’s toys, those top things, and she just took me by the tip—” Barry mimed the action “—and sent me spinning.”

 

Cisco snapped his fingers. The universe was almost making it too easy on him. “The Top.”

 

“No,” Barry groaned. “That’s terrible.”

 

Cisco shrugged off the criticism and got back to double-checking the wiring on the stabiliser. “You just don’t appreciate my genius. It’s better than Mirror Master at least, where’d you even get that?”

 

Barry stilled in thought for a moment. He’d been tossing a spanner from one hand to the other but this too stopped as a faraway look came over his face. “You know, I’m really not sure.”

 

Cisco frowned. It wasn’t like Barry to forget something like that. Cisco certainly hadn’t given the supervillain his name, so who else could have? No one at STAR Labs had had contact with Scudder yet so not them, and Joe had made his opinion on supervillain names clear from the very start. Cisco supposed it didn’t matter. He couldn’t help feeling a little peeved though that a job he’d considered his had been taken away from him again.

 

Barry shook his head, like erasing an etch-a-sketch behind his eyes. “Anyway, we’ve got to stop them before they kill any more people in their quest for revenge.” He put the spanner back on the desk and picked up a screwdriver to keep his hands busy.

 

Cisco didn’t blame Barry for his confusion. This must be a really stressful situation for him. Speaking of… “You know, Lisa told me what happened. I know I wasn’t always his biggest fan, but I’m really sorry about Snart.”

 

Barry’s eyes flicked towards Cisco and then straight back to his hands. “Lisa told you what?”

 

“About how he sacrificed himself.”

 

Barry didn’t say anything immediately and Cisco snuck a quick glance in his direction. His hands had stilled again, hanging limply between this knees where he sat hunched over against the desk. His head was bowed and Cisco couldn’t get a good look at his expression without outright staring at him, but his brow seemed furrowed.

 

Cisco shifted nervously from one foot to the other as the silence stretched thin and Barry continued to sit there like a statue. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

 

“I’m fine, I just…” Barry shook his head again. “Never mind. Have you got an idea how to counteract Dillon’s powers?”

 

Cisco shot his friend a _do you even remember who you’re talking to?_ look. “I have a couple.”

 

“Good, because as much as I hate Double Down, we have to save him before Scudder and Dillon get to him.”

 

 

***

 

 

The next day, Barry woke up feeling groggier than usual. A perk of his super speed was that most days he could get away with a lot less sleep than normal people needed, his body working more efficiently to give him his powers. It let him spend a decent portion of his night out patrolling while also holding down a day job. Occasionally he’d get too little sleep a few days in a row and then he’d crash. Afterwards he’d wake up better than ever, as though he’d gone through a hard reset.

 

So waking up badly was a relatively uncommon phenomenon for him now. He sat up in bed and scrubbed his hands over his face.

 

A glint of metal caught his eye. Barry extended his hand out and watched as the early morning sunlight caught the silver coloured ring on his pinkie. It was plain, with no adornments. He took it off and held it up, turned it around to—

 

The ringing of his phone broke the silence of his room and almost made him drop the ring. He placed it on his bedside table and grabbed his phone, saw it was Joe and swiped to accept the call.

 

“Morning Barr. Grab your bag, we’ve got a lead out near the industrial park in Keystone.”

 

“Okay,” Barry said around a yawn. “Text me the address. I’ll be there in five.”

 

 

***

 

 

The apartment Joe directed him to was a couple of blocks from the bar they’d found the first victim in.

 

It was in an old brick building, five-storeys tall on the corner of two streets and Barry had the strangest sense of déjà vu. Maybe he’d passed it on the way to the crime scene the other day, but it felt like a deeper memory than that. Neither his parents nor Joe had ever really taken him across the river to the Keys for anything as a kid though, and so the feeling of a memory just out of reach hung at the back of his mind like an itch he couldn’t scratch for the rest of the day.

 

The door to the apartment on the third floor was open and it was pitch black inside. Joe stood outside waiting for him.

 

“Have we got a body?” Barry asked.

 

“No, just signs of a fight. Neighbours made a noise complaint but there was no one around by the time we got here. Mighty suspicious in there though.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Joe handed him a torch and lead the way inside. “See for yourself.”

 

The first thing Barry noticed was the thick black plastic taped over all the windows, blocking any light from entering the room. There were candles scattered about the room, extinguished now, and Barry flicked his torch beam up to the ceiling to find the light bulbs had all been removed. The lino at his feet was all scratched up, like someone had taken a grater to it. As they moved through the kitchenette, he saw the tap and sink were covered in the same heavy black plastic. Barry opened the cutlery drawer and found only wood and matte plastic. No shiny metal.

 

“You think Jeremy Tell was hiding out here?” Barry asked Joe.

 

“Looks exactly like the kind of place I’d hole up in if a guy with mirror powers was gunning for me,” Joe said. “Plus, there’s these.” He flashed his light on a piece of paper embedded in the wall. On closer inspection, Barry realised it was a playing card.

 

“Star City PD say those are his calling card. He leaves his prints all over them.”

 

Barry tracked his flashlight beam around the rest of the room’s walls, finding a dozen more cards lodged into the plaster, like little headstones, their shadows stretched out ominously.

 

“No _Where’s Tell?_ note in blood this time?”

 

“No, looks like Scudder and Dillon managed to track him down, there was an altercation and then Tell somehow got away. There’s some blood on a couple of the cards and I guess if we look hard enough, we’ll probably find some samples of Tell’s as well.”

 

Barry dug through his bag for a pair of gloves. “I guess I’d better get to work then.”

 

 

 

***

 

 

It took a while to collect and package all the evidence from the scene and by the time Barry was done filling out the CSI notes and evidence log, he was exhausted. He ended up catching a ride back to the precinct with Joe and spent the rest of the day analysing what he had. Joe was right: Tell had left finger prints all over his cards, as well as some genetic material that Barry didn’t want to think too deeply about after Tell’s powers were explained to him. He got two different DNA profiles off the blood on the playing cards but he didn’t have samples from Scudder or Dillon to compare it against. If they ever caught them though, it would be fairly damning evidence.

 

Barry kept working, a niggling feeling at the back of his mind, until Joe came into his lab and dragged him out a little after eight. The ride home went by in a haze of lights, Barry slumped in his seat and half asleep as Joe hummed along to the jazz on the radio.

 

At home, Iris was just finishing up making Grandma Esther’s famous noodle dish, Wally at her side. He took any chance he got to learn all the traditions and recipes from Joe’s side of the family that he’d missed out on for 20 years.

 

“What did I ever do to deserve you two?” Joe asked, hanging up his jacket and going into the kitchen to savour the smells. Barry lingered behind, watching father, son and daughter move around each other like they’d been doing it their whole lives. It was hard to believe they’d known Wally less than a year.

 

“I don’t know, but it must have been really good.” Iris turned her glowing smile towards Barry and he felt lighter all over. “Go wash up, both of you, we’ll be done in a couple of minutes.”

 

Joe headed off to the bathroom and Wally went to set the table but Barry stayed back, leaning against the doorframe. Iris waved him over and snuck him a fork-full of the noodle bake before she started plating up. Their fingers brushed as she handed the fork to him and the tiniest spark of electricity arched between them. Iris laughed in surprise. “I’ll never get used to that.”

 

By silent agreement Barry started laying out plates for Iris to dish out the noodles onto and then went to fetch the salad from the fridge. “Any luck finding Mirror Master and the Top?”

 

Barry laughed at the names, digging past the leftovers. “Have you been talking to Cisco?”

 

“I might have been.”

 

“No luck yet. Soon, hopefully.”

 

“It’s an interesting case,” Iris mused. “It’d make a good book.”

 

Barry hip checked her playfully as he returned to the bench. “If anyone can write it, it’s you.”

 

“Maybe one day.” Iris was bashful about her own talent but Barry had always been her biggest cheerleader. She was brilliant, pure and simple. “Do you think you could make a statement about the case for an article?”

 

Iris smiled at him and Barry’s heart fluttered.

 

“Yeah, sure.”

 

He could never deny her anything, not when she turned that smile on him. It was like sunshine on your face in the summertime. It was everything right in the world. As long as Barry could remember, Iris had been his be-all and end-all. He loved her so much.

 

Maybe one day she’d love him back.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

 

The situation with Scudder and Dillon came to a head the next day when they decided to wage a very public battle downtown in broad daylight.

 

Barry was attempting to eat his lunch without spilling it all over his computer as he one-handedly typed up some last minute additions to a report he was getting ready for the district attorney when his phone started flashing its meta human alert. He just managed to not send a spoonful of chow mein flying as the loud sound of the vibrating phone against the hardwood desk made him jump. He hastily shoved the spoon back in the take away carton and reached for the phone. The alert was short on details but whatever was happening was only a few blocks away.

 

By the time Barry arrived after a quick detour via Star Labs, suited up and ready to go, there was a whirlwind of mirror shards and razor-sharp playing cards milling in the air like a swarm of locusts. They seemed to buzz angrily for a few seconds, whirling around and around and then smashed to the ground with an almighty crash. It made it pretty easy to guess who was involved in this altercation.

 

Damn. Barry had hoped that after the mess they’d found at Tell’s apartment in Leawood that he’d lay low for a while and give the police some time to smoke out Scudder and Dillon before they killed anyone else. No such luck, it seemed.

 

Barry made his first priority clearing the area of civilians, even the ones who were lollygagging to get a look at the fight. He took them a couple of blocks away and left them dazed and confused, phone cameras focussed on nothing interesting. Barry didn’t know how far the fight would extend before he managed to stop it and he didn’t want any more innocent casualties.

 

Once the area was clear, he headed back to see what was going on.

 

Scudder and Dillon were easy to find. They stood out in the open in the middle of the street and laughed as he skidded to a halt in front of them.

 

“Hey, Flash,” purred Dillon, hanging off Scudder like they were newlyweds in Vegas at 3 in the morning. “Back for round 2?”

 

Barry made a concerted effort not to look her in the face and she ducked this way and that trying to catch his eye, laughing. Eventually he settled for looking off to the right, a good couple of metres away from where Scudder actually stood. “I’m here to put a stop to this before you hurt anyone else.”

 

“Oh, we’re not going to _hurt_ Tell.” In Barry’s periphery vision Dillon’s smile sharpened. “We’re going to _kill_ him. Need to make sure people know they can’t doublecross us and get away with it. That’d be bad for business.”

 

“Barry, we’ve got you on camera,” Cisco said, words rushed. “You have to move, there’s an attack incoming.”

 

Tell, obviously sensing he was outnumbered and outgunned, had recruited backup. Barry only just managed to get away before a barrage of baseball-sized hailstones passed through the space he’d been standing, smashing to pieces against the mirror barrier Scudder quickly erected in front of him and Dillon.

 

“Out of the way, Flash.” The sky began to cloud over as Mark Mardon sauntered closer with Tell dogging his steps. “This doesn’t involve you.”

 

Barry might have been covered almost entirely by Cisco’s suit but he still felt the thrill of electricity in the air, that moment of potential before the heavens let loose, making his skin goosebump and his hair stand on end. He was intensely aware that he’d put himself in the eye of the storm.

 

Barry backed up a step, trying to keep an eye on both pairs of his enemies. “You know I can’t just walk away.”

 

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Mardon raised his hands to the sky and lightning arced across the clouds, followed almost immediately by booming thunder. When he slammed both fists to the ground the lightning followed and Barry only just managed to dip and dodge as he was blinded and deafened by electricity.

 

The attack cut off abruptly and Barry stumbled blindly until his hands found something solid to hold himself up against. All he could see was angry, hot white and all he could hear was nothing. He had no idea where or what his rogues were doing, completely isolated from the word in his cocooned vacuum. His legs were shaking and he only realised it when they gave out beneath him and he crumpled to the ground.

 

Barry’s hearing trickled in first but it was a long stretch of muddied and indistinct sounds before he began to make out words and comprehend sentences. Cisco and Caitlin were frantic in his ear, speaking over each other in their pleas to get him to respond.

 

“Guys, I’m okay,” he said, pulling himself back to standing. The centre of his vision was still whited out but colours and shapes were starting to bleed in at the edges. He cut through the questions filling his ears, asking, “Are they close? Am I in immediate danger?”

 

“No,” answered Caitlin, “they’re pretty focussed on each other at the moment.”

 

Barry hated to think what kind of damage they were doing to the city and each other without his interference. He was only glad he’d got all the innocent bystanders away before things escalated. As his vision shifted from snow white to storm black he saw the shattered windows, the smashed bitumen, the melted metal that the metas’ fight had created, transforming the city street into a post-apocalyptic hellscape. The sky was almost black even though it was the middle of the day and lightning flashed above constantly, every now and then bridging the gap between the clouds and earth.

 

When Barry was healed enough to not be more of a danger to himself than his enemies were, he went looking for the eye of the storm.

 

They hadn’t moved far, only a couple of blocks. Tell was out cold, half-hidden under a pile of rubble. Mardon was still standing but he was cut up pretty badly all over, blood trickling into his eye from a cut on his forehead. One of Scudder’s arms was cradled against his chest, bent at an unnatural angle, but he kept himself between Mardon and Dillon all the same, protecting her from the blunt violence of Weather Wizard’s attacks.

 

There was once again a whirling dervish of sharp objects in the air, pushed one way by Mardon and in the other by Scudder but never really moving from the no man’s land between them. It almost seemed like they were at a stalemate, both men straining to advance and failing, and Barry was just beginning to think they’d have to come to a compromise when Dillon stepped from behind Scudder and her eyes flashed green.

 

Mardon’s control of the whirlwind of mirror shards and razor-sharp playing cards faltered as soon as his eyes flashed that toxic green colour in return. As he collapsed to one knee the deadly cyclone ate through the side of a building, leaving behind a gaping hole in its wake, before in a final moment of control and clarity, Mardon was able to smash wind and mirror alike into the pavement with an almighty crash.

 

The way now cleared, Barry ran forward, ready to bring this battle to an end, but in a last moment of desperation Mardon lashed out and brought the lightning crashing down.

 

It struck Barry dead on this time and the feeling was familiar but no less agonising than the first time, over 3 years ago now. He grit his teeth, waiting for the release of unconsciousness, only hoping it wouldn’t take him nine months to wake up this time, but it never came.

 

Lightning flowed through Barry, filled him, mingling with what the speed force had already gifted him. The searing pain flowed into an ache, like using a muscle long out of use and he just felt supercharged.

 

Warmth. All-encompassing warmth.

 

When the energy began to feel overwhelming he let it out, watched it fork out from his fingertips, watched it hit Mardon, Scudder and Dillon, watched them all fall in a faint. Somehow he knew they were alive, safe but unconscious, like the lightning was still a part of him.

 

“Whoa!” came Cisco’s excited voice through the comms. “What was that?”

 

Barry looked at the electricity still crackling around his fingers like a sentient being.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

 

***

 

 

Barry’s whole body felt like it was humming for days after, like he was a skin-wrapped bomb of energy, ready to explode at any point.

 

 

***

 

 

Things were quiet at the CCPD the next week which of course meant that Barry was extra busy on Flash duties. He was shooting off a quick text to Iris at the start of a night of patrolling when someone plopped down into the chair beside him, making it creak. He reminded himself – as he did every time he heard it do that – that he needed to oil it. Like the dozen times it had happened before, it was more than likely he’d immediately forgot until the next time it happened.

 

The chair squeaked again as its occupant rocked back and forth and Barry began to say, “Cisco, could you cut that out?” until he caught sight of the person beside him.

 

Definitely not Cisco.

 

Most definitely Hartley Rathaway, looking every bit like the cat that got the canary.

 

At that exact moment, Cisco came careening into the cortex, arms flapping and yelling, “Intruder alert!”

 

“Yeah, I managed to figure that one out on my own,” said Barry, never taking his eyes off Hartley while drawing Cisco’s attention to their guest with a wave of his hand.

 

“You!” Cisco exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at Hartley. “I only upgraded the security last week! How does this keep happening?”

 

Rathaway gave Cisco the fakest pitying smile Barry had ever seen. “Don’t feel bad, Cisquito. I’m just that good.”

 

“And so modest as well,” retorted Cisco with a roll of his eyes. He seemed to relax a bit though, affecting a casual saunter that may or may not have been genuine as he made his way to the centre of the cortex, and Barry followed his lead. Cisco knew Rathaway better than Barry did. They’d worked together before the particle accelerator exploded, both of them under the tutelage of Harrison Wells. Rathaway had shown up several times since Barry had taken up the mantle of the Flash and sometimes he was up to mischief, but other times he’d help them out. It was really a coin toss whenever he turned up. He never gave up Barry’s identity even though he’d made it clear he knew it since their first head-to-head, which made Barry think there must be some good in him. But then he’d show up, cause some damage and steal something and Barry would have to wonder. Cisco’s behaviour seemed to indicate he was on their side this time at least.

 

Cisco took the last seat at the command centre like it was business as usual and started tapping away at the computer. Barry finished his text to Iris and sent it off. Hartley continued to spin and rock on his chair, making it squeak obnoxiously.

 

Apropos of nothing, he said, “The Spice Girls are planning a reunion tour.”

 

“You can’t keep calling them that,” Cisco said without looking up. “There’s only three of them.”

 

“I am calling them that. You knew exactly who I meant. It’s a good name.”

 

“I repeat: there’s only three of them.”

 

“It’s post-Ginger Spice Girls.”

 

“Still only three of them.”

 

“Lisa’s posh _and_ scary.”

 

Cisco paused for a second. “Y’know what? I’m gonna give you that one. But—” he stuck a finger in the air before Rathaway could think he’d conceded completely “—it’s still too much of a stretch. Besides, I’m the one who comes up with the names.”

 

Rathaway rolled his eyes, tipping dangerously back in his chair. “You’re just jealous I’m better at it than you.”

 

“Why are you here, Hartley?” Cisco released a suffering sigh. “Just to cause me misery?”

 

Rathaway sat upright, suddenly all business, and pushed his chair back so he could take in Cisco and Barry at once. Then he just sat there in silence, drawing the moment out as Barry fought against wriggling in anticipation. “I’m here—” he paused for effect “—to pass on some information.”

 

“So you’re playing at being good this week, huh? How long’s that gonna last?”

 

Rathaway resumed his nonchalant pose and shrugged. “I’m just a concerned citizen doing my civic duty.”

 

“Sure.” Cisco stretched the word out like taffy. “What’s Lisa Snart done to piss you off this week?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

Cisco scoffed. “That petty, huh?”

 

“Do you want the info or not?” Rathaway asked with a put upon sigh.

 

“If I follow up on this, you’ve gotta stay good for the next month. No supervillainry and help out if the precinct needs it.”

 

“You know I’d do anything David asked me to.”

 

“That’s what worries me.”

 

Barry had always thought that the way Rathaway and Cisco volleyed back and forth spoke of a comfort with each other bordering on friendship that neither of them would ever admit to. It would be nice if Rathaway decided to reform for good instead of this toing and froing, if only for Barry’s sake as the Flash. Maybe he could even join the team, get over this one-upmanship he had going on with Cisco and work for good.

 

As Barry was musing, Cisco reached across him to grab a tablet to put Rathaway’s intel into but jumped back, cradling his hand. “Ow! That hurt.”

 

“Sorry,” Barry said, watching with a kind of numb fascination as lightning crackled around his fingers for a few more seconds. “It’s never done that before.”

 

Rathaway snorted. “That’s what they all say.”

 

 

***

 

 

Lisa Snart’s merry little band of rogues decided to rob a jewellery store on Monday, just as Hartley predicted they would. Barry was already in the vicinity by the time he got the heads up but he still arrived just as the heist was winding up. You could say a lot of things about Lisa Snart, but she did run a tight ship.

 

Barry slid to a halt on the jeweller’s lino floor. Lisa had her gold gun trained on the store’s staff and customers while Frankie Kane moved jewellery from the display cases to a nondescript bag held by Shawna Baez using her magnetokinetic powers. As soon as Shawna caught sight of him she puffed away, taking the bag of loot with her. Through experience he’d learnt that when Shawna had a head start and an open area to teleport across, his chances of catching her were slim-to-none so he focused his attention back on Lisa and Frankie.

 

Lisa swung her gun from the hostages to Barry. “Flash, it’s always so nice to see you.”

 

“I wish I could say the same, Lisa.”

 

She pouted at him. “That’s not very nice. I have to ask though, how did you find us? I thought I’d covered all my bases.”

 

“A little birdy told me you’d be here,” Barry said evasively.

 

It only took Lisa a second of thinking before her face screwed up in incredulous fury. “Hart dobbed on us? That snake!”

 

“Just hand over the gold gun. It’s over.”

 

“It’s never over, Flash, not when you’ve got good friends.”

 

Too late Barry turned to where Frankie had been but there was no trace of her. Barry cursed at himself internally, he’d been careless. Lisa was still standing in her original spot when he looked back to her but she was relaxed, gun lowered to point at the ground, a smile on her face.

 

“Bye, Flash.” She twiddled her fingers at him as Shawna puffed into and out of existence behind her, taking Lisa when she went.

 

Barry didn’t chase. They hadn’t hurt anyone and he’d never catch them anyway.

 

 

***

 

 

There was warmth under his cheek and a gentle hand in his hair.

 

He was on a bed or maybe a couch, his body sinking into it, weighed down with sleep, and his head on the solid pillow of someone’s thigh. His eyes felt heavy, so heavy. He struggled futilely to open them and whined discontentedly when his efforts were for nothing.

 

A soft voice hushed him as a second hand came to rest over his eyes like a blindfold. It blocked out the light of the room and was blessedly cool. He calmed under the touch, an automatic thing like muscle memory. “I’m here,” the voice said.

 

Barry burrowed his face further into the warm body beneath him and at the same time reached for the hand in his hair, not wanting it to go away. It was a hand as large as his own, the other’s fingers slipping between his own easily and pulling his hand upwards to place a kiss on the knuckles.

 

Barry felt safe. All was well with the world. There was no danger.

 

Every breath felt like bringing new life and energy into himself. He breathed deep, intensely aware of the expanding and contracting of his lungs, like the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves.

 

The hand over his eyes pulled away and light crept back in through his eyelids. He felt lighter, his whole body not as weighed down as it had been.

 

“Barry, open your eyes.”

 

He did and the winter sky looked back down on him.

 

Barry blinked awake.

 

A heartbeat that wasn’t his own echoed at his fingertips.

 

He rolled over and pushed himself into a sitting position. He couldn’t remember when he’d fallen asleep but it couldn’t have been early. He felt heavy and lethargic, like his body was being pulled into the ground.

 

He’d been dreaming. He was sure of it. The memories hung in the back of his mind, like cobwebs in the ceiling’s corners, just out of reach and clouded in darkness. He tried to reach after and catch them and they flitted away.

 

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and a glint of silver in the wan morning light caught his attention.

 

He held his hand out in front of him and stared at the unfamiliar ring on his pinkie finger.

 

He didn’t remember it. It wasn’t his.

 

It wasn’t—

 

“Barr!” Joe yelled up the stairs. “If you don’t get up now, you’re gonna be late!”

 

Barry looked to his bedside table and caught sight of his alarm clock, shocked by the time he saw there.

 

He swept back the bedcovers and sped from his room, using his Flash abilities to get through his morning routine in minutes.

 

He came down the stairs just as Joe was grabbing his car keys and wallet off the cabinet by the door.

 

“This’s late even for you. Must’ve been a good dream,” Joe said with a laugh in his voice.

 

Barry ducked his head at the ribbing. “Yeah, I guess.”

 

He had no idea though.

 

He tried to pull his dream back to him but it was all shadows and mist.

 

 

***

 

 

When Barry ran, he almost knew.

 

Other times, when he was moving like everyone else moved, he felt the absence of something, of knowledge just on the periphery of his mind, just out of sight but still there. It was a gnawing semi-presence that troubled his every day.

 

But when he ran, he’d get close to it. He let his mind clear of every single little thing that had piled up over his day and weighed him down. He let his legs move on instinct, following familiar streets but with nowhere in particular in mind as his destination. As he reached speeds only manmade aeroplanes reached, there seemed to be something – someone – calling him forward. A presence. Familiar but not. Just on the tip of his tongue. As fast as he ran, he never quite reached that point of understanding.

 

Which is why it came as a surprise when his feet led him – as if by muscle memory – to a brick apartment building in the Keys. There was an itch of familiarity about it but no matter how he chased it, he couldn’t figure out why he would have been here before. Like a word on the tip of his tongue, his memories – if he had any – danced just outside his conscious, like shadows on a wall.

 

This place was important. A part of him knew that.

 

But he couldn’t say why.

 

He stood there a long time, taking in the tired façade. It felt as familiar as his own home and yet he couldn’t remember ever being here before. Maybe it had been in the background of a local television ad. But then again, no, the wellspring of emotion that threatened to overflow in the presence of this building was too substantial for just a background set of a commercial.

 

It almost made him believe in past lives and déjà vu, so strong was the feeling.

 

Nothing came to him though. As much as he wracked his brain, it couldn’t pull a single memory or connection having to do with this apartment building.

 

He turned his feet towards home.

 

 

***

 

 

Barry decided one weekend that he needed to clean.

 

He looked around him at his room and – while it wasn’t as messy as it sometimes got – he had the overwhelming urge to do a spring clean.

 

He went through his wardrobe and drawers and separated the things he never wore anymore out into a pile to be sent to the op shop later in the week. He looked at the posters on his walls that he’d had since middle school and they suddenly made him feel childish. He took them all down.

 

He put away the books he’d piled on his nightstand that he always said he’d read but never did. Tidied his desk so it looked like a proper workspace and not just somewhere to store everything he didn’t have another place for.

 

He went through his nightstand, getting rid of things he didn’t use anymore, and he found a ring.

 

For the life of him he couldn’t remember where it came from. It definitely wasn’t something he’d buy for himself. The only finger it fit on was his pinkie.

 

The ring was plain silver with a hammered texture and no inscription or maker’s mark anywhere on it. It warmed quickly to his touch as he rolled it between his fingers.

 

He must had gotten it somewhere. It wouldn’t have ended up in his nightstand otherwise. Joe hadn’t ever had to clean up after him in the time Barry had been living at the West house. Even at his messiest in his teenage years, one disappointed look from Joe and his room would be spick and span by the end of the day. So only Barry could have put the ring in his drawer.

 

As hard as he wracked his brain though, no memory would surface. It was like the ring had simply appeared out of nowhere.

 

He wandered down the hall to Iris’ room and asked her if she’d ever seen it before but she hadn’t. He asked Wally as well on the off chance it was his and had somehow made its way into Barry’s room by mistake. It wasn’t.

 

It must be Barry’s, but he was sure it wasn’t. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.

 

He took one last look at the ring, then put it back where he found it and promptly forgot about it again.

 

 

***

 

 

The end of a fairly uneventful work day found Barry joking around with Iris at Joe’s desk in the bull pen. They were waiting for him to finish up a meeting with Singh so they could all drive home together for the Friday night family dinner Wally was putting together.

 

Out of nowhere Iris grabbed his hand (his heart skipped a beat), dragging him bodily off his perch on Joe’s desk and down the corridor towards the interrogation rooms. Luckily there was no one around to question them being there. Barry tried to break Iris’ grip on him but she held on like a pitbull.

 

“Iris, what’s going on?”

 

She didn’t answer. She just rushed him into one of the empty rooms and closed the door quickly behind them, blocking it with her body.

 

There was worry on her face as she asked, “Barry, what’s going on?”

 

He frowned. As far as he knew, they’d been having a fun conversation and then Iris had suddenly flipped on him. “What do you mean?”

 

“Your eyes…” Barry raised his fingers in front of his face but he could see fine. He touched the skin around his eyes and felt nothing out of the ordinary except that hum he’d grown accustomed to lately. “Barry, they’re sparking.”

 

“What?”

 

He looked to the back of the room where he knew the two-way mirror was and the face that stared back at him was demonic.

 

His eyes were a lightning storm, lit up and glowing like lightbulbs. He looked supernatural. No wonder Iris had been panicked.

 

She reached for him but he could feel the same humming sensation that was in his face in his hands now too. He dodged her, keeping her at a safe distance. He knew without a doubt that if she got too close, he would end up hurting her. The static shocks he’d been giving people for the last week suddenly made sense in context. A brief look of sadness passed over Iris’ face at his avoidance but it quickly morphed into purposeful determination.

 

“You have to get to the labs. You can’t be out like this, someone will see you. Are there security cameras throughout the precinct?”

 

“Yeah.” Barry thought hard, trying to remember where all the cameras were placed. He’d honestly never really taken great notice of them before, had never had to and now they could potentially out him. “The ones in here should be off but there are some in the bull pen and corridor.”

 

Iris began to pace as she thought the situation out. Barry couldn’t stop looking at himself in the mirror. “We’ll get Cisco to wipe them once you’re back at the lab. Go now, I’ll let them know you’re coming.”

 

“But what about family dinner?”

 

“Go.” She tried to direct him out of the room without ever touching him. “I’ll explain to dad. You’re going to need time off if this doesn’t stop and he’ll be able to figure that out.”

 

“Okay. Thanks, Iris.”

 

He wanted to squeeze her hand, some token of appreciation for always protecting him, but he’d only hurt her if he tried. So he did his best to smile reassuringly at her and then he ran.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

By the time Barry made it to the labs, electricity was sparking off his fingers as well as his eyes. Cisco and Caitlin kept their distance, pre-warned by Iris about what was going on.

 

Caitlin ushered him into the med bay, leaving a good two metres between them at all times, and talked him through attaching the wires they’d need to read his vitals. Then she returned to the cortex and muttered together with Cisco about what they could see. Barry supposed he should be used to this. Out in the field he was always alone with Cisco and Caitlin only in his ear. It was never a problem then. He felt isolated now though, as they talked _about_ him but not _to_ him while things he couldn’t explain and didn’t understand happened to his body.

 

After what felt like forever Caitlin let him know he could take everything off.

 

“So, what’s wrong with me?” Barry asked, shrugging his shirt back on and emerging into the cortex.

 

“Well, as far as we can tell,” Caitlin said with a wave of her arm at the data Barry couldn’t read, “you’ve got a build-up of speed force in you. Nothing else seems wrong though.”

 

Barry frowned. “But I’ve been running as much as I usually do. How does that even work?”

 

“Honestly? We don’t know,” said Cisco. “It’s like you’re a cup and the speed force is water. Now usually it drip-drips into you in a constant and limited amount. But someone’s turned the tap on full-bore and it’s overflowing.”

 

Barry appreciated the easy-to-understand metaphor but it didn’t leave him any less confused about his predicament. “Well,” he asked a little helplessly, “what do I do?”

 

Cisco and Caitlin exchanged a look, lips pulled tight and they may as well have just said _we don’t know_ for how obvious it was. “Run is our best bet. With Wells not around, we don’t exactly have a manual for this anymore.”

 

So they pumped the humidity level in the lab up and got Barry onto the treadmill. He ran for hours until even he was exhausted.

 

It stopped the lightning from jumping out of his eyes and hands but he still felt the power humming just below his skin. Running more was a stopgap for now, but it wasn’t a lasting solution. Sooner or later the situation would come to a head.

 

He just wished he knew why it was happening to him.

 

And why now?

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

Something was wrong.

 

Something was very wrong.

 

Creeping, relentless, insidious.

 

Something was wrong with Barry and something was wrong with the world.

 

It went beyond this build-up of speed force energy within him; that was only a symptom of a greater ailment. He kept finding himself doing things as if by muscle memory, but they were things he had no memory of ever doing in his life. Like running to buildings he didn’t recognise, or reaching out to run his fingers over… what? He wasn’t sure but his fingers itched for it all the same. He just turned his feet towards home; grabbed his hand back like he’d been burnt.

 

He woke up in the morning – every morning – and already it felt like a puzzle piece was missing. There was a part of his brain that, when prodded, revealed only a hazy, impenetrable mist. He sat on the end of his bed in his pyjamas, feeling dissociated, and the sheer curtains cutting him off from the outside world perfectly mirrored the state of affairs in his mind. It was as if, at times, he could just see through the veil between him and the truth, and then it would move, as though in a breeze, and everything would be obscured again.

 

 

***

 

 

Hartley Rathaway liked to think of himself as a bit of a wildcard. It kept life interesting – for himself and, he liked to think, for those around him.

 

Last month he’d robbed a subsidiary company of Rathaway Industries for the hell of it. He considered it his way of checking in with his parents every now and again – as dysfunctional as it might be. It was easy work and usually very lucrative. Not that he kept any of the money; every single cent he stole from his parents went to homeless LGBTI youth. He couldn’t stomach the thought of keeping it for himself.

 

This week, though, he was making good on his promise to Cisco to play nice in exchange for Team Flash’s help getting payback on Lisa Snart and her crew.

 

Who knew what he’d be doing next month.

 

In his secret heart of hearts (or perhaps not so secret) he hoped it to be more of the same. Not that he got any particular thrill from working with the good guys or the cases they got him in to help out on. Most of them weren’t more than a brisk walk for his intellect; rarely did he get up to a sprint.

 

But he liked working with Captain David Singh and, if the man would finally give in to his request for a date, he might be amenable to sticking around. The fact he hadn’t secured one yet was a mystery to Hartley and certainly wasn’t due to lack of trying. Any assistance he rendered to the cases he was brought in to help on was purely incidental and was done less out of any altruistic reasons than in an attempt to make David forget about his various misdemeanours in the past.

 

Hartley thought he might be close to finally cracking that tough exterior. He came in with coffees in the morning, he brought lunch back when David was too busy to leave his desk, he helped when asked and he stayed out of Team Flash’s way as much as he could. Cisco, in particular, had the annoying habit of saying things in front of David that painted Hartley in a less than a flattering light. In retaliation, Hartley would drop hints as to the identity of the Flash. It was an entertaining game of mutual destruction which David put great efforts into ignoring.

 

Hartley was currently perched on the edge of Barry Allen’s desk while the CI examined pieces of evidence from the latest crime scene. David was looking down over Barry’s shoulder and Hartley couldn’t figure out if this stance was meant to be intimidation or encouragement. Whatever his intentions might be, his presence probably slowed down the speedster who had to work at normal human speed lest he reveal his secret superhero identity.

 

As the examination dragged on, Hartley began rearranging things on Barry’s desk. He reordered the incoming pile in order of what he reckoned was most pressing, swapped stationery from one side to the other, and left his fingerprints on the test tubes. 

 

Quickly running out of distractions, he’d typed 58008 into Barry’s calculator and was just contemplating the even more juvenile impulse to make the shape of a dick out of paperclips when, without looking at him, David said, “Cut it out, Hartley.” This psychic connection David seemed to have with him only solidified Hartley’s belief that they would make one hell of a power couple.

 

His fun thwarted (because acting out against David benefitted no one’s cause), Hartley slipped off the desk, his boots making a hollow thud against the industrial concrete floor of the lab, and went to join David behind Barry. The CI was looking into a microscope, not taking any notice of what was going on around him, so Hartley stole the chance to stretch out his hand in the distance between him and David and twine their fingers together. David’s head shot up from watching Barry and he aimed a warning look in Hartley’s direction – but he squeezed Harley’s hand before he let go and put a little more space between them.

 

Barry looked back at them, his attention drawn by the movement, and David waylaid his curiosity by asking, “How’s it coming along, Mr Allen?”

 

Barry pushed away from the counter he was working at and rubbed his hands over his face. “I won’t have the results of the DNA tests until tomorrow but this soil analysis is looking promising. There’s high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus which could point to a commercial fertiliser so our meta might be hiding out on a farm.” He spun back around. “I’ll see if I can narrow it down any more.”

 

As Barry began to sink back into his work fugue, Hartley stretched and yawned exaggeratedly.

 

“Why don’t you just leave the whole thing for the Flash to deal with, David,” he suggested, Barry glaring at him for the very obvious double entendre, “and you and I can go out for a nice dinner together?”

 

“This is my _job_ , the one for which the city pays me to do. Besides,” he shot Hartley one of those gorgeous smiles he wielded so effectively against the media, and the beginnings of the beard he’d been cultivating for the last week only made it more effective, “we can’t let the superheros get all the glory.”

 

“You’re a superhero to me, _David_ ,” Hartley purred and caught Barry rolling his eyes in his peripheral vision. “How about we get a drink then?”

 

David scoffed. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Hartley.”

 

Hartley sidled closer, knocking his shoulder against David’s and was pleased when the police captain didn’t move away this time. “How about I find you one of those superhero costumes and we’ll see where it goes from there?”

 

David was about to open his mouth, another bit of flirty banter (or at least that’s what Hartley was hoping for, not a chastisement) on the tip of his tongue, when Barry’s voice interrupted.

 

“You’re never being put in charge of costumes again after last Halloween, Hart,” he said distractedly, preparing a soil sample for testing. “I still have nightmares about that spandex monstrosity.”

 

Silence fell like a wet blanket as David and Hartley exchanged a confused look. David mouthed, “ _Hart_?” at him and Hartley mouthed back, “I don’t know!” He followed up with, “ _Halloween?_ ” and Hartley repeated his previous answer. He was as confused as David. Outside of Pied Piper and Flash business, Hartley didn’t think he’d met Barry more than a handful of times. They’d certainly never spent any free time together.

 

 It took a long time for Barry to notice the confusion of the other people in the room but eventually he looked up from the evidence to find Hartley and David staring at him.

 

“What?” He asked, self-consciously.

 

“What?” Hartley echoed back to him, crossing his arms and cocking his hip. “I think I’d remember if we’d been _trick-or-treating_.”

 

Barry swivelled his chair around so he was facing them both. His brow scrunched up and his eyes ticked between Hartley and David like a clock’s pendulum. Whatever he saw there didn’t assuage his confusion. He crossed his arms too and sunk back in his chair, defensive.

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

Hartley and David shared a look. Gently, David said, “You just implied you’d spent last Halloween with Hartley.”

 

“That never happened,” Barry replied immediately, his voice hard with certainty.

 

“Then why did you say it?” demanded Hartley.

 

“I didn’t.”

 

“You did!”

 

David placed a hand on Hartley’s shoulder, shushing him and then directing him with a gentle push to move backwards and stand behind him.

 

“Mr Allen…” He took a step forward and knelt in front of Barry. “Barry, are you feeling okay?”

 

“I just…” Barry looked around, eyes wide with bewilderment, and his voice was pleading, almost a whisper, “I didn’t say that.” He wrung his hands together and then suddenly shoved them into his coat pockets. David didn’t notice anything, probably assumed it was a defensive gesture, but Hartley heard the crackling hum of electricity build up. He tensed, ready to fight if he had to.

 

“Of course,” David said, voice low and assuring. “How about Hartley and I leave you in peace for a while? So you can get that analysis done?”

 

“Yeah,” Barry said, nodding his head jerkily, “that’d be good.”

 

“Okay,” David rose and gestured for Hartley to leave first with a nod of his head in the door’s direction. “If you need anything just give me or Joe a call. We’re here for you.”

 

Barry’s response, “I know,” was almost so quiet as to be inaudible.

 

David guided Hartley out of the room, down the winding corridors of the precinct and to his office, his hand on Hartley’s arm the whole time. Any other day and Hartley might have thrilled at the contact, but right now he was cold with fear.

 

Something was wrong with the Flash, Central City’s greatest protector.

 

Hartley might like to put on a costume every now and again and cause some mischief but it was all fairly light-hearted. He knew that the threats the Flash faced on a semi-regular basis were on a whole other level though. Even with his genius, Hartley couldn’t do what the Flash did. He didn’t have that certain something that made a real hero. Without the Flash, the city – maybe even the world – wasn’t safe.

 

David slumped into his chair and Hartley took the one on the other side of his desk. For a long time they sat there in silence, looking ahead but not at each other.

 

“What’s wrong with him?” Hartley finally asked.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“How long’s this been going on?”

 

“A few days.” Reluctantly, he added, “He’s getting worse quickly.”

 

Hartley had long suspected it, but he felt he had to ask.

 

“You know who he is, don’t you?”

 

David gave a reluctant nod. “I do.”

 

“This isn’t good.”

 

“No.” David ran his hands over his face and slumped back into his chair. A beat of silence, both of them weighed down with the gravity of the situation. Then David scoffed, sat up and extended his hand over the no-man’s land of his desk. Hartley met him halfway. “How about that drink?”

 

 

***

 

 

Barry blinked and he was on Van Buren Bridge.

 

A truck roared by behind him, blaring some 80s pop song, and he was buffeted by its slipstream at the same time he was assaulted from the front by the wind coming up off the river. He looked down and he was in the outfit he remembered leaving the house in. Did that mean it was still today? How long had he been out this time? The last thing he remembered was being in his lab at the precinct. He’d blinked and then he was here.

 

Barry patted himself down and found his mobile in his right trouser pocket. He pulled it out and held it in front of him for a few seconds in trepidation before finally unlocking it.

 

He breathed out a sigh of relief. It was still today. He’d only lost about 5 hours.

 

He quickly dialled Caitlin’s number.

 

“Barry?” He could hear the worry in her voice.

 

“It happened again.” Barry continued, not letting Caitlin speak. He needed to get it all out, as simply and as factually as he could. It was the only way to keep the panic from setting in. “Last thing I remember, I was at the precinct. I woke up on Van Buren Bridge, five hours later.”

 

Barry heard her voice, muffled by distance, and Cisco’s as well, talking in hushed tones on the other end of the line. They tried to keep their worry from Barry but they weren’t that good at lying.

 

When Caitlin returned to the phone, the only thing she had to say was: “It’s getting worse.”

 

“Yeah,” he confirmed, tired and resigned.

 

 

 

***

 

 

Cisco entered the cortex without the usual spring in his step. Normally he’d start his day at 8am with coffee and donuts, the same time as Caitlin, but they’d made the decision to stagger their working hours so there was always someone around and – more importantly – alert with Barry, and so for now he was on the afternoon shift while Caitlin took mornings.

 

Barry was spending the majority of his day in the labs; he could only last a couple of hours at the precinct before the speed force build up in him made it too difficult to hide his symptoms. Cisco and Caitlin had spoken amongst themselves and were of the opinion that Barry was tempting fate going into work like he was, but they couldn’t deny him the sense of normality doing so gave him. Especially not with how the awareness of his symptoms was dragging on him. He knew something was happening with his brain, he knew he was forgetting, losing time, getting confused. It made him scared, the uncertainty of it all, but any small amount of control he could exert over his life calmed him.

 

Caitlin looked tired, with dark shadows under her eyes that grew darker every day. Being the bio-engineer, she carried most of the burden of Barry’s care and Cisco knew her inability to help him in any way kept her up at night. None of the tests they did on a daily basis told them anything they didn’t already know. They weren’t any closer to the cause of Barry’s symptoms than the day they’d first presented. Cisco sat on the sidelines, watching both his friends struggle and wishing, irrationally, that Barry was a machine he could turn off, take apart and fix.

 

The direness of the situation had really become apparent to them the day before when Hartley Rathaway of all people had walked into the labs without a single disparaging quip and offered his unconditional help fighting crime in the Flash’s absence. He’d seen the way Barry had acted at work and he was worried. They recruited him to keep an extra eye on him at the precinct when Joe couldn’t and he’d texted Cisco and Caitlin consistently throughout the morning. It was him who’d urged Barry to leave work when he had, noticing the sparks at Barry’s fingertips before the speedster had.

 

Cisco dropped into the seat beside Caitlin. Footage from the training room was playing on the desktop screens but it wasn’t much use for keeping an eye on Barry: the amount of electricity he was letting off as he ran left the screen almost entirely whited out.

 

Cisco swivelled back and forth on his chair. “How is he today?”

 

Caitlin looked from the screens to him but her smile was wonky. “Mostly okay. He was a bit confused and forgetful when he first came in, but the running seems to help.”

 

“Any lost time today?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

They lapsed into silence again and watched the screens.

 

“I got him to start keeping notes on what he’s been experiencing,” said Caitlin conversationally, but Cisco sensed it was the prelude to some bad news, as most things so often were recently.

 

“Anything that can help figure out what’s wrong with him?” He asked hopefully.

 

“Maybe,” Caitlin’s head see-sawed back and forth, “if I could read it.”

 

“His writing’s not _that_ bad.”

 

Silently, she pushed an exercise book towards him. Cisco shot her a curious look and then flipped it open. It started off it Barry’s neat scrawl, written out in that precise and factual manner that echoed the style of police evidence reports. It said nothing that Cisco didn’t already know and so he flipped forward a few pages. The legibility of the writing dipped suddenly into nonsensical scribbles within the space of a page and then the letters reformed into something structured again – but they weren’t the Latin alphabet anymore.

 

Cisco flipped forward a few more pages until he reached what he could only assume was today’s entry. It didn’t return to anything approaching readable. He gave the characters a proper look but they didn’t match any language he knew. “What does it mean?”

 

“I don’t know. It doesn’t match any known language.”

 

“Does he realise he wrote… whatever it is?”

 

“I don’t know,” Caitlin repeated, her voice rising in frustration. “He can’t keep going to work.”

 

This wasn’t a new argument but they nevertheless felt the need to rehash it daily. Caitlin was often the voice of reason, while Cisco represented sentiment. Their true feelings lay somewhere in between.

 

“We can’t take that from him,” said Cisco, reciting the main argument. “It would destroy him. He has to make the decision on his own.”

 

Caitlin pursed her lips. “What if he doesn’t until it’s too late?”

 

Cisco didn’t have an answer for that and he prayed it wasn’t something they ever had to worry about for real.

 

“I’ll just go…” He gestured in the direction of the training room and Caitlin gave him a tight smile.

 

Cisco dragged his feet on the walk from the cortex to the training room. It was hard seeing Barry the way he was and this new development only made him more apprehensive as to what state he’d find his friend in.

 

“Hey, Barry,” Cisco said, coming into the room. Behind the screen they’d erected around the treadmill, lightning sparked wildly as Barry blurred almost invisibly. The screen and the lightning rods they’d installed were meant to protect Cisco and Caitlin while they were making observations but Barry’s symptoms had escalated rapidly since they’d first presented and now even these precautions didn’t make Cisco feel completely safe.

 

On hearing Cisco’s greeting, Barry slowed down to a jog, the storm around him constricting until it was no more than an occasional crackle across his body.

 

“Hey, Cisco,” he said, grabbing a towel to wipe at the sweat that beaded on his forehead, making his hair hang limply. “How’s it going?”

 

“You know: same old, same old,” said Cisco, staying near the wall – and by extension, the door. “How’re you feeling?”

 

Barry shrugged. “As good as can be expected. I haven’t hurt anyone, but I did have to leave work before lunch today.” He paused a second, then admitted, “It’s getting worse.”

 

“Yeah,” Cisco conceded wearily. There was no point denying it, everyone knew. “I thought that might happen. You’re not going to get in trouble at work are you? For leaving early all the time?”

 

“No, I don’t think so. Caitlin wrote up some kind of medical excuse and Captain Singh seemed to buy it.”

 

“I think something might be going on with him and Hartley,” Cisco said, aiming for levity.

 

“Hartley Rathaway?” asked Barry in disbelief. “No way. I haven’t seen him in ages.”

 

“Yeah?” Cisco said, trying to make it seem casual. He knew they’d run into each other that morning at the precinct; Hartley has texted as much. He’d been the one to send Barry ‘home’.

 

“Remember? He helped with the… the…” Barry drifted off for a second. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “that didn’t happen. Wrong Mirror Master.”

 

“What did Hartley help with, Barry?” prodded Cisco, against his better judgement. The sound of Barry’s sudden laughter startled him but more worrying was when it died off and Barry just stood there, looking down at his feet, his face paling and his breathing starting to quicken.

 

Cisco’s first instinct was to go to Barry, shake him, look him in the eyes, but the lightning around him took that moment to crackle as if in warning, and Cisco remembered he wasn’t supposed to get closer than a metre. “Barry, what’s wrong?”

 

Head still hung, a tiny voice emerged from under the obscuring shadow of his hair. “I’m afraid.”

 

“Of what?”

 

Barry looked up, looked around, searching. Cisco followed his gaze, not knowing what they were searching for or if Barry was finding it. “Where is he?”

 

“Who, Barry?”

 

A look of intense concentration flitted across Barry’s face before being crushed under waves of confusion. “I don’t know.”

 

“That’s fine,” Cisco was quick to reassure. Whatever Barry was thinking about at that moment – and Cisco hadn’t the slightest idea of what it was – it was doing nothing but distressing him. Luckily, Barry was quick to forget things in his current state. He was easily distracted. “I heard Caitlin is making you write a journal now. That must be fun.”

 

Barry brightened immediately. “Yeah, _Ms Snow_ assigned me homework. I feel like I’m back in primary school.”

 

Cisco laughed at that. Caitlin’s bedside manner left a lot to be desired and he could just picture that same awkward bluntness in a prep classroom. Barry joined in on the laughter and it felt so normal, so much like _before_ that Cisco’s heart ached.

 

“You know, I saw Rathaway and Captain Singh just this morning,” Barry continued conspiratorially, as if he hadn’t just said he hadn’t seen Hartley in ages a few minutes before. “They did seem pretty close. You might be onto something.”

 

 

***

 

 

Barry lasted until the end of the week at work – doing laps of the city on his coffee and lunch breaks, and leaving as soon as he felt the power build up, earlier and earlier each day – before his symptoms became too obvious to hide.

 

His eyes sparked constantly and his body was giving off electricity so badly he looked like a Jacob’s ladder on speed.

 

He spent his nights at Joe’s house, craving a modicum of normality but vigilant about never getting too close to anyone to hurt them. They had to keep the curtains closed at all times so the neighbours didn’t grow suspicious of the indoor lightning storm. The rest of the time was spent at STAR Labs either playing guinea pig in the gamut of tests Cisco and Caitlin were putting him through, or running his ass off on the treadmill.

 

He preferred the latter. It wasn’t as good as running full tilt around the outskirts of Central, the truth always just one step away, tantalizingly and naggingly close, but it scratched an itch he couldn’t reach in any other way.

 

 

***

 

 

Iris had just brushed her teeth and was walking down the hall when she heard voices coming from Barry’s room.

 

The build-up of speed force within him worried them all but there had been other symptoms beside the crackling electricity that covered his body that concerned Iris more. She didn’t like him being on his own for long periods of time, overcome at the thought of it by a sense of dread she couldn’t explain. She and Joe kept watch over him during the nights, and the days he spent with Cisco and Caitlin.

 

Iris wondered if Barry even realised he was being monitored almost 24/7. He never seemed to be more than half-connected with what was going on around him these days, like his mind was elsewhere.

 

Iris pushed the door open a crack and peeked inside.

 

Barry was sitting on his bed, looking out the window. He was mumbling something she couldn’t make out but seemed to stop and start like one side of a conversation. Iris stayed there a long time, straining her ears, but couldn’t make out a single word. The cadence was English but the words were all wrong.

 

She waited for a pause in his gibberish and then pushed the door open further, knocking on it as she did. “Hey, Barr,” she said, quietly so as to not startle him. “Are you okay?”

 

Barry turned slowly, his gaze vacant, his eyes almost white with electricity. “Iris, don’t freak out, okay? I can explain.”

 

Iris came further into the room. “Explain what?”

 

Barry blinked a couple of times and his eyes cleared, the lightning abating a little. He looked around the room as though he didn’t know where he was, as if he’d never been here before in his life. Iris waved and Barry focused on her. She watched as recognition bled into his gaze.

 

“Explain what, Barr?” Iris prompted again, once she was sure he was present.

 

“I don’t know.” He turned to her, eyes pleading. “Iris, what’s wrong with me?”

 

“Oh, Barr.” Iris’ heart broke. She wanted nothing more than to hold him close and comfort him but knew she’d be hurt if she tried. Besides, she couldn’t offer any real consolation; she had no idea what was happening to Barry or how it could be fixed. They had their best minds on it and they’d come up with nothing so far. Iris sat at the head of the bed, a good metre between them, and hoped her closeness was some small comfort to Barry. “Cisco and Caitlin are going to figure this out. You’ll be better soon.”

 

“But what if they can’t?” Barry wrung his hands together, lightning sparking, each brush of skin against skin like striking a match. “What if I just keep getting worse?”

 

“That’s not going to happen, okay?” It was a physical pain to not be able to touch him. “Just stay positive for me, Barr.”

 

Within a few minutes he was calm again, the slate of his memory wiped clean and his previous terror forgotten as though it had never happened to begin with, and Iris bid him goodnight, keeping a brave face on until she was out of the room.

 

 

***

 

 

Barry couldn’t explain it to himself, but one morning before heading to the labs, he’d rustled through his bedside drawer to find something. What that something was, he hadn’t known until he looked and found it.

 

A silver ring. He’d drawn it out, held it up to the light, trying to find some hint as to where it had come from, why he’d kept it and why he’d been drawn to find it this morning. He didn’t wear jewellery, never had. It wasn’t his. It looked like stainless steel rather than any expensive metal, the outer sides hammered in a pattern of circles. As always – although he had no recollection of ever examining this ring before – he found nothing. What was different today was that instead of putting it back into the drawer, he’d slid it into the pocket of his trousers and headed down to breakfast.

 

Several times throughout the day he reached his hand down into his pocket, surprised each time to find something there, and fiddled with the rounded piece of metal. It warmed quickly to his touch and the crackling lightning that raced across his fingers constantly now reacted happily to the feel of it. He couldn’t explain it, but that was the impression he got, as though the thing building up inside him was pleased by this anomaly in his pocket.

 

Like every other day this week, he started off by running on the treadmill. Then, once he’d discharged enough energy to feel safe, he began the testing. Back to running at midday, then testing again, then running. The routine was easy and he often wasn’t sure if time he lost during the day was part of his condition or just blanking out due to boredom. He tried not to talk much because talking got him in trouble; it made Caitlin and Cisco give him that pitying look that they were terrible at hiding, as obvious on their faces as a bright red cross across a test sheet. It meant he had said or done something wrong, but he almost never knew what.

 

When he said goodbye to Cisco and Caitlin at the end of the day, Barry felt a finality in it he couldn’t explain. He just knew that tomorrow would not be the same.

 

He felt a pull as he walked through the deserted parking lot around STAR Labs. Warm yellow tongues of electricity flicked across his body and he held his arm up in front of him, watching as it arced across his skin. He could only imagine what he’d look like to someone passing by.

 

He needed to run.

 

He suddenly knew this like birds know when it’s time to migrate south.

 

He needed to run.

 

His head never felt so clear and unfettered as when he was running.

 

He needed to run.

 

So he did.

 

He knew Joe and Iris would be expecting him home in five minutes and when he didn’t turn up that they’d worry. A part of him felt bad for that but it was overcome by the need to move, to really stretch his legs in a way he hadn’t for months, even before this thing that was afflicting him crept in.

 

The faster he went, the closer he felt he was getting.

 

Closer to what? He didn’t know.

 

A feeling. A presence. Just beyond his reach.

 

So Barry ran faster, pushed himself until his legs ached and he was about to collapse.

 

He reached out and there was a ring on a finger. A ring he’d never… no, that wasn’t right. He had seen it before. He’d put it in his pocket this morning, he’d been playing with it all day. How had he forgotten that? When had he put it on his hand? He didn’t remember.

 

It was there though. It was there and it meant something. He didn’t know what, but he knew that it did.

 

He reached out with every swing of his arm, and as he reached, he ran. Faster and faster. Vibrating along with the universe so that everything just passed straight through him. Buildings, mountains, cars and boats alike. He ran through them all. So fast even that he was losing track of the world flying by around him.

 

There was something there. Like the phantom itch of a lost limb.

 

His lungs ached and there was a buzzing in his ears.

 

He almost had it.

 

Happy agony.

 

Lightning crackled down from the sky.

 

He threw his arm forward, ring glinting, and caught the hand in front of him.

 

Grabbed it and pulled.

 

As he slid to a stop, no idea where he was or how long he’d been running, dirt blowing out in front of him like a bomb going off to disperse his kinetic energy, he saw a man in front of him.

 

Stormy eyes, close-cropped salt and pepper hair, his hand tense around some kind of futuristic gun.

 

Barry knew he should tense up too, get ready to fight, but his body remained calm.

 

It was Len after all. Len would never hurt him.

 

_Len_?

 

Where had that name, that thought, come f—

 

Suddenly everything he’d lost came rushing back.

 

Len.

 

It was Len.

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

Len remembered blinding light and a flash of pain but it was so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It was an infinitesimal cross-section in the entirety of time; a solitary grain of sand buried among all the sand on all the beaches in this world and every other; a single page in a book that never began and never ended.

 

Len had been everywhere and nowhere at once. Stretched thin over forever and experiencing the totality of time and space simultaneously. The big bang happened at the same time as the dinosaurs at the same time as the pyramids at the same time as space exploration at the same time as the legion of super-heroes at the same time as the death of the universe. That was a straight line and from it branched every possible alternative timeline generated from every miniscule choice, weaving out like so many veins and arteries and capillaries to create the living, breathing multiverse.

 

Len saw and knew everything, but it all began to melt away the moment Barry was in front of him.

 

It was all so easy to forget when the only thing he wanted to remember was this one miracle: that everything in his life led him to be hijacking an armoured truck in the same city that birthed the Flash. Beautiful, perfect Barry. More important than all of it. So sad and confused – until Len felt the timeline slip back into place and recognition bloomed across his face.

 

“Len.”

 

The sound of his name from Barry’s lips was sweeter than any other noise in the whole of everything.

 

Extracting himself from the flow of time and settling back into his own body and memories was a slow process achieved over microseconds. As he wove his being back together, he took back his hand – his real hand. He kept his scars – they were a part of him – but fixed the break in his radius that had never really healed right and had hurt him on cold days. He pulled his memories from all the memories that ever existed like pulling clothes from a drawer, holding them up for scrutiny and throwing away the ones that didn’t fit. He inspected the timeline as it settled and chose what was comfortable to him from the tapestry of choices that didn’t matter.

 

He could see himself saying, “Hey, Barry,” a moment ahead in the timeline and so he said just that: “Hey, Barry,” the words echoing on for eternity, the springboard to a thousand different variations on the same theme.

 

Barry was wrapped up in his arms before the memories were even fully settled in either of them.

 

Thoughts not his own echoed in Len’s head as he disconnected from the time stream.

 

 _He’d forgotten Len._ Hush. _How had he forgotten Len?_ Hush. _He’d never loved anyone more._ I’m here now. _So many memories, so much love, so much heartache._ I’m here now. _And it had all been gone, completely gone._ Not gone, not anymore.

 

“I’m so sorry,” Barry babbled over and over again, taking Len’s hands in his, running his fingers over Len’s face. Len clung back, shushing all of his apologies, and brushing the tears from Barry’s eyes. “I love you. Please don’t go away again.”

 

He leant in and kissed Barry then, like a morsel of food after centuries of starving, so soft and sweet it almost hurt. “I won’t.”

 

Barry pulled back without breaking the connection of touch between them, and looked him over properly. “How?” he asked in wonder.

 

Len cocked his head and considered the question. Despite everything he had been through, he knew no simple answer to that question. Yet, at the same time, he knew it was something that had had to happen. Why had it had to happen? That he didn’t know. These things weren’t straightforward and oftentimes worked backwards, as though the fates found an ending they liked and worked through all the possible scenarios until they got to the cause. So simple, like resetting dominoes and then sending them skittering all over again. The why or the how, though, of those Len wasn’t certain. Only one answer came to mind.

 

“Because it couldn’t be any other way.”

 

Barry tilted his head, a small smile quirking at the edges of his lips, as he settled his hands at Len’s neck.

 

“Are you some kind of higher-dimensional wise man now?”

 

Len snorted, stepping forward, wanting the space between them gone, and leaning into Barry’s touch. “I very much doubt it.”

 

It was like whiplash when Barry suddenly pulled back. Len felt his absence even more keenly than he had since the oculus had blown him to a million pieces throughout time. Barry was fired up with a manic energy, pacing in a tight circle in front of Len.

 

“We have to call Lisa. We have to find Lisa.” He wrung his hands together. “She’s going to kill me.”

 

Len smiled indulgently. “Calm down.”

 

“And Mick! How do we call Mick? He’s on a time ship.”

 

“Barry!” Barry’s eyes snapped back to Len and he halted in his tracks. “Just be here – totally here – with me, just for a minute. Everything else can wait that long.”

 

Barry’s eyes flicked nervously from Len to some distant city, unseeable on the skyline, and back before his nerves seemed to flow out of him. “Okay, I can do that.”

 

Len stepped forward, holding his arms out and Barry slid into them.

 

It was like slotting the last puzzle piece in its place: suddenly everything felt right and complete. Wherever he had been – and the memories were little more than wisps already – this cemented that he wasn’t going back.

 

Barry was warm, warmer than a normal person, and Len could sense the speed force flowing through him and around him. The remnants of his own time in the temporal zone sang in harmony. How long had it been since he’d last held Barry like this? It was hard to calculate as time and memories shifted. It felt like a lifetime ago.

 

Afterwards Barry thrust his phone in Len’s direction and made him ring Lisa.

 

He dialled the numbers, his fingers moving easily on muscle memory, and then held the phone to his ear with bated breath. It rang and rang and just as it felt like he couldn’t take it anymore, she answered.

 

“Hey,” her voice came down the line, sounding bored. “Who’s this?”

 

“Hey, train wreck.”

 

There was a long beat of silence and Len almost believed the call had dropped out. Then came her voice again, uncertain. “L-Lenny?”

 

“Yeah, Lees,” he said, the sound of his name in her voice making him lips curl up in an involuntary smile as it always did. “It’s me.”

 

He heard a sob and instantly regretted doing this over the phone. He tensed up as he listened to her cry, unable to comfort her or prove this wasn’t a cruel joke with his presence. Barry slipped in behind him, chin over Len’s shoulder, the phone sandwiched between their ears. When he heard the sounds coming through the phone, he hugged himself even closer to Len.

 

It was several minutes before Lisa spoke again and, when she did, her voice was nasally and breathless. “I forgot.”

 

“I know,” Len said, looking to reassure her. She had done nothing wrong and he never wanted her to think that way. Soon she would forget the forgetting so maybe it meant nothing to console her, but it was important to Len and perhaps that was enough. “We all did.”

 

“How could I forget?”

 

Len could hear the tears threatening to spill from her eyes and he ached inside with the need to comfort her and protect her as he always had. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. But I’m back now. I’m safe. And I’m not going away again.”

 

A soft sniffle, the sound of a hand bumping against her phone’s microphone.

 

“You better come see me soon, jerk.”

 

“You know I will, sis.”

 

Len ended the call, locked the phone and untangled himself from Barry to hand it back. Barry slipped it into his pocket and then stepped back into Len’s space, eyes shy in contrast to his confident touch. Len wondered if he was even fully conscious of his hands remapping the geography of Len’s body.

 

Len placed kiss after kiss upon his lips and Barry’s smile after each one only grew more radiant. It was a long time before they were aware of anything besides each other.

 

The sun hung low in the sky over an expanse of nothingness.

 

“Where are we?” Len finally asked.

 

Barry looked around him, at the long stretch of desert, no sign of humanity in sight. “I have no idea.”

 

They walked. They could have run, but they walked. No destination in mind; they picked a direction and struck off in it with no hope of getting anywhere. The landscape around them looked like middle America. A lot of places in the world looked like middle America, though, and for all they knew, they might be in Australia.

 

Barry told Len about all that had happened while he was away, the facts slipping as he said them, times and places and people mixed up. It made no difference. Len knew it would settle into something more linear and concrete soon. It was only a matter of time. Everything was only a matter of time.

 

Their fingers brushed together as their arms swung side by side.

 

When the sun had set and they were still no closer to a town, Barry stopped and turned to Len to ask, “What now?”

 

It was an easy question to answer.

 

“I want to go home.”

 

Barry twined their fingers together. “You are home.”

 

Len considered the man in front of him. Perhaps Barry wasn’t so wrong.

 

“You’re really here, aren’t you?” Barry asked, the fingers of one hand going to Len’s face and lingering there. “I’m not imagining this?”

 

Len leant into the touch. “I don’t think so.”

 

“I don’t understand what happened. They told me you were dead. I think that’s what…” Barry’s brow screwed up in a mess of lines. He shook his head. “It’s all running together.”

 

“I think I was dead in a way. But also not.”

 

“What was it like where you were?”

 

Len considered for a moment. “It’s hard to describe. Like watching yourself sleep while dreaming. Sometimes I was with you. Sometimes I was everywhere. Sometimes I was nowhere. It just was. Now that I’m out of there, it’s starting to fade, too.” He could feel his mind shying away from certain memories, as though spooked by the enormity of them now he was back in his all-too-fragile human vessel. That was fine though. There was no point in remembering now that he was home.

 

And he was home, together with Barry, but he craved something a little more familiar than endless desert plains. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

“Where should we go?”

 

“How about my apartment?”

 

“Is it still yours?”

 

“I don’t know, but that’s where I want to be right now.”

 

Barry ran them there, heading west until they found something that looked familiar, running a lot slower than he usually would have, and Len could feel the speed force coursing through him. His own body thrummed in harmony. He reached out and the lightning that crackled around Barry as he ran twisted around his fingers like a playful thing.

 

They paused for only a second outside of Len’s building and it looked exactly as he remembered it: rundown but enduring. They took the stairs. They creaked in the places they always had and by the time they’d reached the fifth floor Len’s legs were aching. He supposed months on end of nothingness on top of 40-odd years of proper life would do that to a body.

 

The door of 512 opened when Len tried the handle. Unlocked. He pushed it in, expecting angry voices at any moment but when the door swung open to bare the kitchenette and living room to their eyes, there was no sign that it had been lived in recently.

 

They wandered cautiously further inside, Len going into the bedroom and opening the wardrobe.

 

“My jackets are here,” he announced, coming back into the living room.

 

“This is so weird.” Barry ran his hands over everything: the dusty counter of the kitchen, the peeling wallpaper, the shitty couch. “I could have sworn you didn’t even exist half an hour ago. I was in this building not long ago. I was…” Again, Barry’s face crumpled like a paper bag. “I can’t remember what I was doing. But you weren’t here,” he stated with a little more certainty. “You didn’t exist.”

 

“I didn’t. I hadn’t ever, not until you pulled me back in.”

 

Len slumped down onto the couch, the feel of it so familiar and foreign at once. He let his head drop back and closed his eyes, feeling the rough fabric of the couch under his fingertips. It threaded and weaved together and it felt like he could feel each individual fibre, twined together like so much time. Here was his own thread, weaving together with this person here, splitting off again…

 

He was startled out of his reverie when Barry straddled his legs. His eyelids felt like they were weighed down with ten-tonne weights and Barry was already leaning into Len’s space by the time he managed to drag them open.

 

“Are you tired?” Barry asked, and his breath was warm upon Len’s face.

 

“Yes.” A pause. “No.” Another pause. “I’m not sure.”

 

Barry smiled fondly at him. “Do you know that you just gave me every possible answer to that question?” His fingers ran over Len’s face, following the ridge of his eyebrows, along his cheekbones, settling on his lips. “Can I kiss you?”

 

“Always,” Len answered with a smirk, and Barry’s fingers rode the waves of his words.

 

Barry’s hands slid back then, ever so gently, and cradled Len’s face. The first meeting of lips was tentative and exploratory, melding seamlessly into something more assured. Len sighed into the feeling. His eyes slipped shut as Barry licked into his mouth and it was impossible to open them again.

 

The next thing he knew, Barry’s warmth was gone.

 

“Come on,” Barry said, somehow already on his feet and holding out a hand for Len. “You need sleep.”

 

Len followed easily, allowing Barry to undress and redress him in his pyjamas, lead him through the motions of brushing his teeth and getting into bed. Barry’s warmth was soon enveloping him again and Len would have been content to drift off then and there but he noticed Barry wide awake despite the darkening under his eyes. Len tangled their fingers together like tree roots under the forest floor, trying to coax Barry’s worries from him.

 

“Sleep.”

 

Barry shook his head. “I don’t want to go to sleep.”

 

“Why not?”

 

Barry’s fingers tightened their hold. “What if you’re not here when I wake up?”

 

“I will be.”

 

Another head shake and a slight turning away. “You can’t promise that. I could wake up and you could be gone and I might never know. It happened before.”

 

“You found me, though, didn’t you? You’d find me again. We’re connected,” he said, drawing their intertwined hands to his mouth to place a kiss on Barry’s knuckles. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Barry Allen.”

 

A beat of silence: the forewarning of something important.

 

“I love you,” said Barry, fragile like gossamer spider webs.

 

And for once it was easy to return that trust.

 

“I love you, too.”

 

 

***

 

 

Lisa crawled into bed in the early hours of the morning and Barry rolled to the side, making room for her between them.

 

“Couldn’t stay away, huh?” Len teased at the same time as he was pulling her in closer to him.

 

“Shut up.” She settled against Len’s side, tormenting him for his jibe with the coldness of her hands and feet. “Barry, get over here.”

 

Given an invitation, Barry was quick to resume the closeness they’d shared a minute ago, now with Lisa sandwiched safely between them. She and Barry both faced towards Len, obviously sharing Barry’s anxiety about him disappearing in the night. His existence felt sure to him, though, and he had no such worries. If only he could share his confidence with them and ease their minds.

 

Lisa shifted, her hands bunching angrily in his shirt. “You stupid idiot. Why’d you have to go off and get yourself killed?”

 

“Not killed… Just gone.”

 

She punched him on the arm, enough to sting, enough to show she was being serious. It did its job: it was sobering. Len supposed it had been easier on him; he had been aware of them both the whole time he was gone. They, on the other hand, had thought he was dead.

 

“Don’t talk _fucking semantics_ at me, Lenny,” Lisa said after a moment. Len knew she had taken the time so that she had not screamed them at him, but the curse still exploded from her mouth with ferocity. “Just apologise.”

 

He pulled her in closer to him, reaching back for Barry as well as an afterthought. He deserved this apology, too. “I’m sorry, sis.”

 

“That’s better,” she said, ducking her head against his chest. Her next words were muffled. “Don’t do it again.”

 

“No more time travelling shenanigans for me,” he promised around a yawn. “Scout’s honour.”

 

“Good. Do it again and I’ll kill you myself.”

 

Len chuckled and after that it was easy to slip back into sleep.

 

 

***

 

 

When Barry woke, Len was already looking up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.

 

“Hey,” he whispered, conscious of Lisa between them, still asleep.

 

Len turned and settled with his head resting on one arm. Lisa had stolen his pillow in the night and dragged it further down the bed so nothing impeded Barry and Len’s view of each other.

 

“Hey.”

 

Barry’s fingers itched to reach out and touch Len, to make sure he was really there. Looking back, he was now aware there had been times Len was with him, even when he hadn’t been, physically. Barry still wasn’t sure how it had all worked, and he didn’t know if he cared to find out. Len was here with him now and that was all that mattered.

 

But it still seemed so unreal, as though it could be snatched away at any moment.

 

Barry had forgotten Len and, while forgetting, had known no different – except for that little nagging feeling of something gone missing. If he had forgotten once, he could forget again.

 

He risked waking Lisa and reached over her to touch Len’s face, running his fingers over his cheek and the prickly stubble there. Len leant into the touch. “You’re still here,” said Barry, not able to keep the awe out of his voice.

 

Len caught Barry’s fingers and brought them to his lips. The movement of Len’s mouth as he spoke tickled Barry’s fingertips. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Barry took his hand back and shimmied up the bed, as quietly and gently as he could, until he was able to lean across and kiss Len. There was a spark between them – and he didn’t mean that in a romance novel kind of way. He could feel the tingle of energy hum between them, a miniature version of what he felt when he ran. His speed force was familiar and it seemed to revel in whatever power still clung to Len.

 

They pulled apart as Lisa began complaining (“Ew, you’re both gross.” She kicked and tickled like a four year old.) and Barry’s lips tingled.

 

Len slipped from the bed with a laugh.

 

Once he was gone, Lisa stilled. She pulled him back down the bed and drew the blankets over them, almost blocking out all light from the room. Under this cover of darkness, she ferreted out Barry’s hand and clung to it. “Thank you.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For bringing him back to me.”

 

When Lisa and Barry came into the living room, Len was already heating up water on the stove.

 

“I’ve got coffee but there’s no food.”

 

“I can fix that.” As soon as the offer was out of his mouth, Barry regretted it. What if he forgot once Len was out of his sight? What if he didn’t forget, but he still came back to an empty apartment? “Just- just give me a sec. Don’t go anywhere.”

 

He shifted nervously from one foot to the other, looking from Len to the door until Lisa pushed him and commanded, “go!” in frustration.

 

It only took him a minute to run to a supermarket, get everything he needed, leave some money on the counter and arrive back at Len’s apartment but he was so sure the whole time that he was going to return to an empty room.

 

When he got back, he first dumped the bags on the kitchenette counter and then went from Lisa to Len, reaffirming their presence with his touch. Lisa prodded him back, dodging his advances and laughing. Len pulled him close into an encompassing hug, his body a solidly reassuring presence.

 

They ate together quietly on the floor, held together by the places they touched like a life raft weathering the storm. There were so many unanswered questions but they didn’t speak about it. What was the point? The ending was the one they’d wanted, did it matter how they got there?

 

Barry had no idea how Len’s presence would affect the timeline or what catastrophes that might mean in the future.

 

He didn’t care though. Bring it on. He wasn’t taking this back. He had no regrets.

 

 

***

 

 

Rain had been coming down in an incessant drizzle all day, throwing a grey curtain over the city. The oppressive clouds swallowed the moon and what few stars could be seen from the outskirts of the city, and at 3 in the morning the darkness was an almost physical presence. Saints and Sinners’ neon sign stretched out like a welcoming carpet as Barry dodged potholes filled with water on his way to the bar.

 

From the outside it looked closed, deserted, the windows black. Barry didn’t bother going to the front door, instead aiming just a couple of metres to the right, to the black glass there. He rapped on the window three times and only a second afterwards a hand reached out and pulled him in.

 

He thanked McCulloch for the assistance as a cheer went through the bar. He waved it off, his head ducked to hide the smile on his face. The Rogues were celebrating – and at Barry’s expense. It was fine though. He’d walked into enough drunken commiserations to be able to handle the frivolity when they did occasionally get one over him.

 

Half of the Rogues knew who Barry really was, the other half knew he was at least associated with the forensic department and STAR Labs and so any win against the Flash or police was a chance to rib him.

 

Tonight was a full house by the look of it, with a couple of unexpected extras.

 

“Mick! Sara!” Barry cried, making a beeline to the pool tables. “What are you doing in Central?”

 

Sara handed her cue off and wrapped Barry up in a hug, lifting him up off the floor. “Just having some downtime off the ship. Thought we’d drop by and see our favourite people.”

 

Barry was almost knocked off his feet when Mick passed behind him on the way to his next shot and whacked him on the back in greeting. “Hey, Speedy.”

 

 “Actually, Speedy is Olly’s…” Barry spun around trying to make eye contact but Mick was focussed completely on the game. He gave up before he accidentally revealed someone’s secret identity. “You know what? Never mind.”

 

“Don’t worry about him.” Sara shot a fond look at Mick as he leant over and took his shot. “He’s got a one-track mind but he’s happy to be back.” She turned back to Barry and gestured for him to follow her to the bank of fridges at the back of the gaming area of the bar. “We’ll stop by the labs sometime, have a proper heart-to-heart.”

 

“I’d like that.” She offered him a beer which he waved off. “It’s good to see you both. You’re looking good.”

 

The Legends had dropped into the present a couple of times since Len decided to get off that crazy train. Barry got the impression that Sara didn’t like going back to Star since her sister’s death, even though her dad was still there, so she usually tagged along with Mick to Central. She fit in well wherever she went – whether it be with the STAR Labs crew or the Rogues – and it was hard not to like her immediately. Add in the life-or-death situations they seemed to find themselves in weekly and she and Barry had become fast friends.

 

“You, too,” she said as she pulled him into a one-armed hug, the beer bottles in her other hand clinking together. “What’s the latest big drama in Central?”

 

“It’s actually pretty calm at the moment, touch wood,” answered Barry, rapping his knuckles on the pool table. “How’s time travelling treating you?”

 

Sara handed off the second beer to Mick then twisted the top of her own and took a swig. Her head seesawed from side to side. “Well, we haven’t accidentally erased ourselves from history so I figure we can’t be doing too badly.”

 

Barry laughed. “Are you around long?”

 

“Who knows?” she said with a shrug, accepting the pool cue that was handed to her. “Rip needs a little away time from us every now and again. He’ll give us a call when he gets bored.”

 

Barry pointed a finger at her, already backing away. “You keep your hands off Len when you go.”

 

Sara held her hands up, smile wide. “Wouldn’t dream of pinching him.”

 

Barry heard the clack of balls and then her whoop of success from behind him as he walked away.

 

He was almost at the bar when Hartley got in his way, still in his Pied Piper costume and with a garishly colourful cocktail in his hand. He blew a party whistle in Barry’s face and crowed, “Better luck next time, Barry!”

 

“Yeah, yeah, Hart,” Barry replied, giving him a good-natured shove. “We almost had you.”

 

“Aw, leave him alone, Hart.” A hand snaked around his neck and the next thing he knew he had Lisa clinging to him. The fruity smell of red wine hung on her breath as she nuzzled against his face and smacked a kiss to his cheek. Barry wiped at the spot where he no doubt now had a bright red kiss mark. “No need to rub salt in poor Barry’s wounds.”

 

Lisa untangled herself from him, holding him at arm’s length while Hartley grinned smarmily over her shoulder. “We’re doing karaoke later. You better join in.”

 

“It’s already 3am.” Lisa and Hartley’s expressions remained blank, as though that meant nothing to them. Barry sighed. “I make no promises. We’ll probably head home soon anyway.”

 

“Ugh,” Lisa complained, “you two are so domestic.”

 

Barry’s eyebrow ticked up. “Some of us have actual jobs to get up for in a few hours.”

 

“Sucks to be you,” said Hartley, sticking his tongue out and there was no sympathy to be had in his tone. He blew the party favour again.

 

Barry rolled his eyes, laughing. “You’re so mature.”

 

Hartley leant in to whisper in Lisa’s ear then, the two of them giggling and sneaking glances at Barry that promised nothing good.

 

“ _I’ve paid my dues,_ ” they began to sing, surprisingly in tune, _“time after time_.”

 

Barry groaned. “Don’t.”

 

“ _I’ve done my sentence but committed no crime_.”

 

“Don’t,” he repeated, inching away from them.

 

“ _And bad mistakes, I’ve made a few_.”

 

Despite Barry’s protestations, soon the whole bar full of Rogues and Legends was joining in on a drunken rendition of We Are the Champions. Barry shook his head with a chuckle as he turned away and sought refuge at the bar.

 

Len was there, nursing a beer. He smiled at Barry as he slid into the seat beside him, lacing their fingers together for a second in the shadow of the bar, a quick squeeze and then separated again. The bartender brought Barry his usual without having to be asked and Barry clinked his bottle against Len’s before taking a swallow.

 

“Well done tonight,” he congratulated the thief.

 

“It was one of my finer plans,” Len said with pride in his voice, “if I do say so myself.”

 

Barry picked at the label on his bottle. “Guess I’ll just have to be faster next time.”

 

“Or you could join us, help out.”

 

It wasn’t the first time Len had extended the offer and Barry doubted it would be the last. While he did enjoy the rare chances they got to work together when the Rogues and STAR Labs teamed up against a bigger threat, and as much as he would like more time with Len on the job, the Flash as a symbol had to be irreproachable.

 

“You know that’s always going to be a ‘no’.”

 

“Doesn’t hurt to ask.” Len licked his thumb and rubbed it against Barry’s cheek. “Lisa got you good.”

 

Barry smiled as Len’s touch lingered a little longer than necessary, their eyes meeting for a second before Barry’s slipped away to take in the room around them, filled with friends and allies and enemies – sometimes all 3 in one person. They’d finished up their singalong and were back to drinking and socialising, awake like it was the middle of the day even as Barry felt his own energy begin to flag. The fondness he felt for them all was immeasurable.

 

“What now?” Len asked, drawing Barry’s attention back to him.

 

It was a question that could mean a lot of things. Barry saw the immensity of the future spread out before him, all the choices he would have to make and all the repercussions those choices would bring, and for once in his life he felt at ease with those possibilities.

 

“I don’t know,” he said, but this time that admittance of ignorance came with a wellspring of hope. He felt he could face anything with Len beside him. “You’re here, and that’s enough for now.”

 

“C’mon,” said Len, slipping from his stool. “Let’s go home.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done!!!
> 
> A massive thank you to Max for being my biggest cheerleader throughout all of this.


End file.
